INFLUENCES  OF 


ON  THE  BASIS  OF  RATZEL'S  SYSTEM 

OF 
ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY 


BY 

ELLEN  CHURCHILL  SEMPLE 

AUTHOB  OF  "AMERICAN  BISTORT  AND  ITS  GEOGRAPHIC 
CONDITIONS" 


NEW  YORK 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

LONDON:  CONSTABLE  &  COMPANY  LTD. 


COPYRIGHT,  1911, 

BY 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

August,   1923 


PRINTED  I\7  THE  U.  S.  A. 


SRLE 


TO  THE  MEMORY 
OF 

FRIEDRICH  RATZEL 


Hither,  as  to  their  fountain,  other  stars 
Repairing,  in  their  golden  urns  draw  light 

MILTON. 


^O^ 


PREFACE 

THE  present  book,  as  originally  planned  over  seven  years 
ago,  was  to  be  a  simplified  paraphrase  or  restatement  of  the 
principles  embodied  in  Friedrich  Ratzel's  Anthropo-Geog- 
raphie.  The  German  work  is  difficult  reading  even  for  Ger- 
mans. To  most  English  and  American  students  of  geogra- 
phic environment  it  is  a  closed  book,  a  treasure-house  bolted 
and  barred.  Ratzel  himself  realized  "that  any  English  form 
could  not  be  a  literal  translation,  but  must  be  adapted  to  the 
Anglo-Celtic  and  especially  to  the  Anglo-American  mind." 
The  writer  undertook,  with  Ratzel's  approval,  to  make  such 
an  adapted  restatement  of  the  principles,  with  a  view  to 
making  them  pass  current  where  they  are  now  unknown. 
But  the  initial  stages  of  the  work  revealed  the  necessity  of 
a  radical  modification  of  the  original  plan. 

Ratzel  performed  the  great  service  of  placing  anthropo- 
geography  on  a  secure  scientific  basis.  He  had  his  fore- 
runners in  Montesquieu,  Alexander  von  Humboldt,  Buckle, 
Ritter,  Kohl,  Peschel  and  others ;  but  he  first  investigated  the 
subject  from  the  modern  scientific  point  of  view,  constructed 
his  system  according  to  the  principles  of  evolution,  and  based 
his  conclusions  on  world-wide  inductions,  for  which  his  pre- 
decessors did  not  command  the  data.  To  this  task  he  brought 
thorough  training  as  a  naturalist,  broad  reading  and  travel, 
a  profound  and  original  intellect,  and  amazing  fertility  of 
thought.  Yet  the  field  which  he  had  chosen  was  so  vast,  and 
its  material  so  complex,  that  even  his  big  mental  grasp  could 
not  wholly  compass  it.  His  conclusions,  therefore,  are  not  al- 
ways exhaustive  or  final. 

Moreover,  the  very  fecundity  of  his  ideas  often  left  him 
no  time  to  test  the  validity  of  his  principles.  He  enunciates 
one  brilliant  generalization  after  another.  Sometimes  he  re- 
veals the  mind  of  a  seer  or  poet,  throwing  out  conclusions 
which  are  highly  suggestive,  on  the  face  of  them  convincing, 


vi  PREFACE 

but  which  on  examination  prove  untenable,  or  at  best  must 
be  set  down  as  unproven  or  needing  qualification.  But  these 
were  just  the  slag  from  the  great  furnace  of  his  mind,  slag 
not  always  worthless.  Brilliant  and  far-reaching  as  were  his 
conclusions,  he  did  not  execute  a  well-ordered  plan.  Rather 
he  grew  with  his  work,  and  his  work  and  its  problems  grew 
with  him.  He  took  a  mountain-top  view  of  things,  kept  his 
eyes  always  on  the  far  horizon,  and  in  the  splendid  sweep  of 
his  scientific  conceptions  sometimes  overlooked  the  details 
near  at  hand.  Herein  lay  his  greatness  and  his  limitation. 

These  facts  brought  the  writer  face  to  face  with  a  serious 
problem.  Ratzel's  work  needed  to  be  tested,  verified.  The 
only  solution  was  to  go  over  the  whole  field  from  the  begin- 
ning, making  research  for  the  data  as  from  the  foundation, 
and  checking  off  the  principles  against  the  facts.  This  was 
especially  necessary,  because  it  was  not  always  obvious  that 
Ratzel  had  based  his  inductions  on  sufficiently  broad  data; 
and  his  published  work  had  been  open  to  the  just  criticism 
of  inadequate  citation  of  authorities.  It  was  imperative, 
moreover,  that  any  investigation  of  geographic  environment 
for  the  English-speaking  world  should  meet  its  public  well 
supported  both  by  facts  and  authorities,  because  that  public 
had  not  previously  known  a  Ritter  or  a  Peschel. 

The  writer's  own  investigation  revealed  the  fact  that  Rat- 
ael's  principles  of  anthropo-geography  did  not  constitute  a 
complete,  well-proportioned  system.  Some  aspects  of  the 
subject  had  been  developed  exhaustively,  these  of  course  the 
most  important ;  but  others  had  been  treated  inadequately, 
others  were  merely  a  hint  or  an  inference,  and  yet  others 
were  represented  by  an  hiatus.  It  became  necessary,  there- 
for, to  work  up  certain  important  themes  with  a  thorough- 
ness commensurate  with  their  significance,  to  reduce  the  scale 
of  others,  and  to  fill  up  certain  gaps  with  original  contribu- 
tions to  the  science.  Always  it  was  necessary  to  clarify  the 
original  statement,  where  that  was  adhered  to,  and  to  throw 
it  into  the  concrete  form  of  expression  demanded  by  the 
Anglo-Saxon  mind. 

One  point  more.  The  organic  theory  of  society  and  state 
permeates  the  Anthropo-geographie,  because  Ratzel  formu- 


PREFACE  vii 

lated  his  principles  at  a  time  when  Herbert  Spencer  exercised 
a  wide  influence  upon  European  thought.  This  theory,  now 
generally  abandoned  by  sociologists,  had  to  be  eliminated 
from  any  restatement  of  Ratzel's  system.  Though  it  was 
applied  in  the  original  often  in  great  detail,  it  stood  there 
nevertheless  rather  as  a  scaffolding  around  the  finished  edi- 
fice; and  the  stability  of  the  structure  after  this  scaffolding 
is  removed  shows  how  extraneous  to  the  whole  it  was.  The 
theory  performed,  however,  a  great  service  in  impressing 
Ratzel's  mind  with  the  life-giving  connection  between  land 
and  people. 

The  writer's  own  method  of  research  has  been  to  compare 
typical  peoples  of  all  races  and  all  stages  of  cultural  devel- 
opment, living  under  similar  geographic  conditions.  If  these 
peoples  of  different  ethnic  stocks  but  similar  environments 
manifested  similar  or  related  social,  economic  or  historical 
development,  it  was  reasonable  to  infer  that  such  similarities 
were  due  to  environment  and  not  to  race.  Thus,  by  exten- 
sive comparison,  the  race  factor  in  these  problems  of  two 
unknown  quantities  was  eliminated  for  certain  large  classes 
of  social  and  historical  phenomena. 

The  writer,  moreover,  has  purposely  avoided  definitions, 
formulas,  and  the  enunciation  of  hard-and-fast  rules ;  and  has 
refrained  from  any  effort  to  delimit  the  field  or  define  the 
relation  of  this  new  science  of  anthropo-geography  to  the 
older  sciences.  It  is  unwise  to  put  tight  clothes  on  a  grow- 
ing child.  The  eventual  form  and  scope  of  the  science,  the 
definition  and  organization  of  its  material  must  evolve  grad- 
ually, after  long  years  and  many  efforts  of  many  workers 
in  the  field.  The  eternal  flux  of  Nature  runs  through  an- 
thropo-geography, and  warns  against  precipitate  or  rigid 
conclusions.  But  its  laws  are  none  the  less  well  founded  be- 
cause they  do  not  lend  themselves  to  mathematical  finality  of 
statement.  For  this  reason  the  writer  speaks  of  geographic 
factors  and  influences,  shuns  the  word  geographic  determi- 
nant, and  speaks  with  extreme  caution  of  geographic  control. 

The  present  volume  is  offered  to  the  public  with  a  deep 
sense  of  its  inadequacy ;  with  the  realization  that  some  of  its 
principles  may  have  to  be  modified  or  their  emphasis  altered 


viii  PREFACE 

after  wider  research;  but  also  with  the  hope  that  this  effort 
may  make  the  way  easier  for  the  scholar  who  shall  some  day 
write  the  ideal  treatise  on  anthropo-geography. 

In  my  work  on  this  book  I  have  only  one  person  to 
thank,  the  great  master  who  was  my  teacher  and  friend  dur- 
ing his  life,  and  after  his  death  my  inspiration. 

ELLEN  CHURCHILL  SEMPLE. 
LOUISVILLE,  KENTUCKY. 

January,  1911. 


CONTENTS 

PREFACE    . 


CHAPTER  I. 

OPERATION  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 
Man  a  product  of  the  earth's  surface — Persistent  effect  of  geo- 
graphic barriers — Recurrent  influences  of  nature-made  high- 
ways— Regions  of  historical  similarity — Persistence  of 
climatic  influences — Relation  of  geography  to  history — Mul- 
tiplicity of  geographic  factors — Evolution  of  geographic 
relations — Interplay  of  geographic  factors — Direct  and 
indirect  effects  of  environment — Indirect  effects  in  differ- 
entiation of  colonial  peoples — General  importance  of  in- 
direct effects — Time  element — Previous  habitat — Trans- 
planted religions — Partial  response  to  environment — The 
larger  conception  of  environment — Unity  of  the  earth  and 
the  human  race  1 

CHAPTER  II. 

CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES 
Four  classes  of  influences — Physical  effects  of  environment — Stat- 
ure and  environment — Effects  of  dominant  activities — 
Physical  effects  of  climate — Pigmentation  in  relation  to 
heat  and  light — Pigmentation  and  altitude — Difficulty  of 
generalization  from  geographic  distribution — Psychical  ef- 
fects— In  Religion — In  mind  and  character — In  language 
— The  great  man  in  history — Economic  and  social  effects — 
Size  of  the  social  group — Effects  on  movements  of  peoples 
— Segregation  and  accessibility — Change  of  habitat 32 

CHAPTER  III. 

SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  THE  LAND 
People  and  land — Political  geography — Political  versus  social 
geography — Land  basis  of  society — Morgan 's  societas — 
Land  bond  in  primitive  hunter  tribes — In  fisher  tribes — In 
pastoral  tribes — Land  and  state — Strength  of  the  land 
bond  in  the  state — Evolution  of  land  tenure — Land  and 
food  supply — Advance  from  natural  to  artificial  basis  of 
subsistence — Land  basis  in  relation  to  agriculture — Migra- 
tory and  sedentary  agriculture — Geographic  checks  to  pro- 
gress in  economic  and  social  development — Native  animal 
and  plant  life  as  factors  in  progress — Density  of  population 
under  different  cultural  and  geographic  conditions — Ita 
relation  to  government — Territorial  expansion  of  the  statt 
— Artificial  checks  to  population — Extra-territorial  rela- 
tions of  state  and  people — Theory  of  progress  from  the 
standpoint  of  geography — Progressive  dependence  of  man 
upon  nature  51 


x  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  IV. 
MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  IN  THKTR  GEOGRAPHICAL 

SIGNIFICANCE 

Universality  of  such  movements — The  name  Historical  Movement — 
Its  evolution — Its  importance  in  history — Geographical  in- 
terpretation of  historical  movement — Mobility  of  primitive 
peoples — Civilization  and  mobility — Migration  and  ethnic 
mingling — Cultural  modification  during  migration — The 
transit  land — War  as  form  of  historical  movement — Slavery 
— Military  colonies — Withdrawal  and  flight — Natural  re- 
gions of  asylum — Emigration  and  colonization — Commerce 
as  a  form  of  historical  movement — Movements  due  to  reli- 
gion— Historical  movement  and  race  distribution — Zonal 
distribution — Movements  to  like  or  better  geographic  con- 
ditions— Their  direction — Return  movements — Regions  of 
attraction  and  repulsion — Psychical  influences  in  certain 
movements — Two  results  of  historical  movement — Differen- 
tiation and  area — Differentiation  and  isolation — Geographic 
conditions  of  heterogeneity  and  homogeneity — Assimi- 
lation— Elimination  of  unfit  variants  through  historical 
movement — Geographical  origins  74 

CHAPTER  V. 

GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 

The  importance  of  geographical  location — Content  of  the  term 
location — Intercontinental  location — Natural  versus  vicinal 
location — Naturally  defined  location — Vicinal  location — 
Vicinal  groups  of  similar  or  diverse  race  and  culture — 
Thalassic  vicinal  location — Complementary  locations — Con- 
tinuous and  scattered  location — Central  versus  peripheral 
location — Mutual  relations  between  center  and  periphery 
— Inland  and  coastward  expansion — Reaction  between 
center  and  periphery — Periphery  in  colonization — Dominant 
historical  side— Change  of  historical  front — Contrasted 
historical  sides — One-sided  historical  location — Scattered 
location — Due  to  adverse  geographic  conditions — leland 
way  stations  on  maritime  routes — Scattered  location  of 
primitive  peoples — Ethnic  islands  of  expansion  and  decline 
— Discontinuous  distribution — Contrasted  location — Geo- 
graphical polarity — Geographical  marks  of  growth  and  de- 
cline— Interpretation  of  scattered  and  marginal  location — 
Contrast  between  ethnic  islands  of  growth  and  decline. . . .  129 

CHAPTER  VI. 
GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 

The  size  of  the  earth — Relation  of  area  to  life — Area  and  differ- 
entiation— The  struggle  for  space — National  area  an  in- 
dex of  social  and  political  development — The  Oikoumene — 
The  unity  of  the  human  species  in  relation  to  the  earth — 
Isolation  and  differentiation — Monotonous  race  type  of 
small  area — Wide  race  distribution  and  inner  diversities — 


CONTENTS  xi 

Large  area  a  guarantee  of  racial  or  national  permanence 
— Weakness  of  small  states — Protection  of  large  area  to 
primitive  peoples— Contrast  of  large  and  small  areas  in 
bio-geography— Political  domination  of  large  areas — Area 
and  literature — Small  geographic  base  of  primitive  so- 
cieties— Influence  of  small,  confined  areas — The  process  of 
territorial  growth — Historical  advance  from  small  to  large 
areas — Gradations  in  area  and  in  development — Prelim- 
inaries to  ethnic  and  political  expansion — Significance  of 
sphere  of  influence  or  activity — Nature  of  expansion  in 
new  and  old  countries — Relation  of  ethnic  to  political  ex- 
pansion"— Relation  of  people  and  state  to  political  bound- 
ary— Expansion  of  civilization — Cultural  advantages  of 
large  political  area — Politico-economic  advantages — Polit- 
ical area  and  the  national  horizon — National  estimates  of 
area — Limitations  of  small  tribal  conceptions — Evolution 
of  territorial  policies — Colonial  expansion — The  mind  of 
colonials  168 

CHAPTER  VII. 

GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 

The  boundary  zone  in  Nature — Oscillating  boundaries  of  the 
habitable  area  of  the  earth — Wallace's  Line  a  typical 
boundary  zone— Boundaries  as  limits  of  expansion — Bound- 
ary zone  as  index  of  growth  or  decline — Breadth  of 
boundary  zone — Broad  frontier  zones  of  active  expansion 
— Value  of  barrier  boundaries — The  sea  as  the  absolute 
boundary — Natural  boundaries  as  bases  of  ethnic  and  po- 
litical boundaries — Primitive  waste  boundaries — Alien  in- 
trusions into  border  wastes — Politico-economic  significance 
of  the  waste  boundary — Common  boundary  districts — 
Tariff  free  zones — Boundary  zones  of  mingled  race  ele- 
ments— Assimilation  of  civilization  in  boundary  zones — 
Relation  of  ethnic  and  cultural  assimilation — The  border 
zone  of  assimilation  in  political  expansion — Tendency  to- 
ward defection  along  political  frontiers — The  spirit  of 
colonial  frontiers — Free  border  states  as  political  survivals 
— Guardians  of  the  marches — Lawless  citizens  deported  to 
political  frontiers — Drift  of  lawless  elements  to  the  fron- 
tiers— Asylums  beyond  the  border 204 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

7  COAST  PEOPLES 

The  coast  a  zone  of  transition — The  inner  edge — Shifting  of 
the  inner  edge — Outer  edge  in  original  settlement — In  early 
navigation — In  colonization — Inland  advance  of  colonies 
— Interpenetration  of  land  and  sea — Ratio  of  shore-line 
to  area — Criticism  of  the  formula — Accessibility  of  coasts 
from  hinterland — Accessibility  of  coasts  from  the  sea — 
Embayed  coasts — Contrasted  coastal  belts — Evolution  of 
ports — Influence  of  offshore  islands — Previous  habitat  of 


xii  CONTENTS 

coast-dwellers — Habitability  of  coasts  as  a  factor  in  mari- 
time development — Geographic  conditions  for  brilliant 
maritime  development — Scope  and  importance  of  seaward 
expansion — Ethnic  contrast  between  coast  and  interior 
peoples — Ethnic  amalgamations  of  coastlands — Lingua 
franca  a  product  of  coasts — Coast-dwellers  as  middlemen 
— Differentiation  of  coast  from  inland  people — Early  civi- 
lization of  coasts — Progress  from  thalassic  to  oceanic 
coasts — Importance  of  geographic  location  of  coasts — His- 
torical decline  of  certain  coasts — Complex  interplay  of 
geographic  factors  in  coastlands 242 

CHAPTER  IX. 

OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS 

The  water  a  factor  in  man 's  mobility — Oceans  and  seas  the  fac- 
tor of  union  in  universal  history — Origin  of  navigation — 
Primitive  forms — Relation  of  river  to  marine  navigation 
— Retarded  and  advanced  navigation — Geographic  condi- 
tions in  Polynesia — Mediterranean  versus  Atlantic  seaman- 
ship— Three  geographic  stages  of  maritime  development — 
Enclosed  seas  as  areas  of  ethnic  and  cultural  assimilation 
— Assimilation  facilitated  by  ethnic  kinship — Importance 
of  zonal  and  continental  location  of  enclosed  seas — Thalas- 
sic character  of  the  Indian  Ocean — Limitations  of  small 
area  in  enclosed  seas — Successive  maritime  periods  in  his- 
tory— Contrasted  historical  roles  of  northern  and  southern 
hemispheres — Size  of  the  ocean — Neutrality  of  the  seas — 
Mare  dausum  and  Mare  liberum 292 

CHAPTER  X. 

MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER 

The  protection  of  a  water  frontier — Pile  villages  of  ancient  times 
— Modern  pile  dwellings — Their  geographic  distribution — 
River-dwellers  in  old  and  popular  lands — Man 's  encroach- 
ment upon  the  sea  by  reclamation  of  land — The  struggle 
with  the  water — Mound  villages  in  river  flood-plains — Social 
and  political  gain  by  control  of  the  water — A  factor  in 
early  civilization  of  arid  lands — The  economy  of  the  water 
— Fisheries — Factors  in  maritime  expansion — Fisheries  as 
nurseries  of  seamen — Anthropo-geographic  importance  of 
navigation  318 

CHAPTER  XL 

THE  ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 
Rivers  as  intermediaries  between  land  and  sea — Sea  navigation 
merges  into  river  navigation — Historical  importance  of  seas 
and  oceans  influenced  by  their  debouching  streams — Lack 
of  coast  articulations  supplied  by  rivers — River  highways 
as  basis  of  commercial  preeminence — Importance  of  rivers 
in  large  countries — Rivers  as  highways  of  expansion — De- 
terminants of  routes  in  arid  or  semi-arid  lands — Increasing 


CONTENTS  xiii 

historical  importance  of  rivers  from  source  to  mouth  —  Value 
of  location  at  hydrographic  centers  —  Effect  of  current 
upon  trade  and  expansion  —  Importance  of  mouth  to  up- 
stream people  —  Prevention  of  monopoly  of  river  mouths  — 
Motive  for  canals  in  lower  course  —  Watershed  canals  for 
extension  of  inland  waterways  —  Eivers  and  railroads  — 
Natural  unity  of  every  river  system  —  In  arid  lands  as  com- 
mon source  of  water  supply  —  Tendency  towards  ethnic 
and  cultural  unity  in  a  river  valley  —  Identity  of  country 
with  river  valley  —  Rivers  as  boundaries  of  races  and 
peoples  —  Rivers  as  political  boundaries  —  Fluvial  settle- 
ments and  peoples  —  Boatman  tribes  or  castes  —  River  is- 
lands as  protected  sites  —  River  and  lake  islands  as  robber 
strongholds  —  River  peninsulas  —  River  islands  as  sites  of 
trading  posts  and  colonies  —  Swamps  as  barriers  and 
boundaries  —  Swamps  as  regions  of  survivals  —  Swamps  as 
places  of  refuge  —  The  spirit  of  the  marshes  —  Economic  and 
political  importance  of  lakes  —  Lakes  as  nuclei  of  states  — 
Lakes  as  fresh-water  seas  ..............................  336 


CHAPTER 

CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 

Insularity  of  the  land-masses  —  Classification   of  land-masses   ac- 

cording to  size  and  location  —  Effect  of  the  size  of  land- 

masses  —  Independence  due  to  location  versus  independence 

due  to   size  —  Continental   convergence   and    ethnic   kinship 

—  Africa's     location  —  The     Atlantic     abyss  —  Geographical 
character  of  the  Pacific  —  Pacific  affinities  of  North  Amer- 
ica —  The  Atlantic  face  of  America  as  the  infant  Orient  of 
the  world  —  The  Atlantic  abyss  in  the  movements  of  peoples 

—  Races    and    continents  —  Contrast    of    the    northern    and 
southern  continents  —  Effects  of  continental  structure  upon 
historical    development  —  Structure    of    North    and    South 
America  —  Cultural   superiority   of   Pacific   slope  Indians  — 
Coast   articulations   of   continents  —  Importance   of  size   in 
continental  articulations  —  Peninsular  conditions  most  favor- 
able  to   historical    development  —  The   continental    base   of 
peninsulas  —  Continental  base  a  zone  of  transition  —  Conti- 
nental base  the  scene  of  invasion  and  war  —  Peninsular  ex- 
tremities   as    areas    of    isolation  —  Ethnic    unity    of    penin- 
sulas —  Peninsulas  as  intermediaries  .....................       380 

CHAPTER  xrn. 

ISLAND   PEOPLES 

Physical  relationship  between  islands  and  peninsulas  —  Character 
of  insular  flora  and  fauna  —  Paradoxical  influences  of  island 
habitat  on  man  —  Conservative  and  radical  tendencies  born 
of  isolation  and  accessibility  —  Islands  as  nurseries  and  dis- 
seminators of  distinctive  civilizations  —  Limitation  of  small 
area  in  insular  history  —  Sources  of  ethnic  stock  of  islands 
on  nearest  mainland.  Ethnic  divergence  with  increased 


xiv  CONTENTS 

isolation — Differentiation  of  peoples  and  civilizations  in 
islands — Differentiation  of  language — Unification  of  race 
in  islands — Remoter  sources  of  island  populations — Double 
sources — Mixed  population  of  small  thalassic  isles — Signifi- 
cant location  of  island  way  stations — Thalassic  islands  as 
goals  of  maritime  expansion — Political  detachability  of 
islands — Insular  weakness  based  upon  small  area — Island 
fragments  of  broken  empires — Area  and  location  as  factors 
in  political  autonomy  of  islands — Historical  effects  of 
island  isolation  in  primitive  retardation — Later  stimulation 
of  development — Excessive  isolation — Protection  of  an  is- 
land environment — Islands  as  places  of  refuge — Islands  as 
places  of  survival — Effects  of  small  area  in  islands — 
Economic  limitations  of  their  small  area — Dense  popula- 
tion of  islands — Geographic  causes  of  this  density — 
Oceanic  climate  as  factor — Relation  of  density  to  size — 
Density  affected  by  a  focal  location  for  trade — Overflow 
of  island  population  and  colonies  to  the  mainland — Preco- 
cious development  of  island  agriculture — Intensive  tillage 
— Emigration  and  colonization  from  islands — Recent  emi- 
gration from  islands — Maritime  enterprise  as  outlet — Arti- 
ficial checks  to  population — Polyandry — Infanticide — Low 
valuation  of  human  life 409 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

Relief  of  the  sea  floor — Mean  elevations  of  the  continents — 
Distribution  of  relief — Homologous  reliefs  and  homologous 
histories — Anthropo-geography  of  lowlands — Extensive 
plains  unfavorable  to  early  development — Conditions  for 
fusion  in  plains — Retardation  due  to  monotonous  environ- 
ment— Influence  of  slight  geographic  features  in  plains — 
Plains  and  political  expansion — Arid  plains — Nomadism — 
Pastoral  life — Pastoral  nomads  of  Arctic  plains — Histor- 
ical importance  of  steppe  nomads — Mobility  of  pastoral 
nomads — Seasonal  migrations — Marauding  expeditions — 
Forms  of  defense  against  nomad  depredations — Pastoral 
life  as  a  training  for  soldiers — Capacity  for  political  or- 
ganization and  consolidation — Centralization  versus  decen- 
tralization in  nomadism — Spirit  of  independence  among 
nomads — Resistance  to  conquest — Curtailment  of  nomadism 
— Supplementary  agriculture  of  pastoral  nomadism — Irri- 
gation ancl  horticulture — Scant  diet  of  nomads — Effects  of 
a  diminishing  water  supply — Checks  to  population — Trad* 
of  nomads — Pastoral  nomnds  as  middlemen — Desert  mar- 
kets— Nomad  industries — Arid  lands  as  areas  of  arrested 
development — Mental  and  moral  qualities  of  nomads — 
Religion  of  pastoral  nomads 473 

CHAPTER  XV. 

MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND   THEIR  PASSES 
Man  as  part  of  the  mobile  envelope  of  the  earth — Inaccessibility 


XV 

of  mountains — Mountains  as  transit  regions — Transition 
forms  of  relief  between  highlands  and  lowlands — Pied- 
mont belts  as  boundary  zones — Density  of  population  in 
piedmont  belts — Piedmont  towns  and  cities — Piedmonts  as 
colonial  or  backwoods  frontiers — Mountain  carriers — Power 
of  mountain  barriers  to  block  or  deflect  historical  move- 
ment— Significance  of  mountain  valleys — Longitudinal  val- 
leys— Passes  in  mountain  barriers — Breadth  of  mountain 
barriers— Dominant  transmontane  routes — Height  and  form 
of  mountain  barriers — Contrasted  accessibility  of  opposite 
slopes — Political  and  ethnic  effects — Persistence  of  barrier 
nature— Importance  of  mountain  passes — Geographic  con- 
ditions affecting  the  historical  importance  of  passes — 
Passes  determine  the  transmontane  routes — Navigable  river 
approaches  to  passes — Types  of  settlement  in  the  valley 
approaches — Pass  cities  and  their  markets — Pass  peoples 
— Their  political  importance 524 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

INFLUENCES  OF  A  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 
Zones  of  altitude — Politico-economic  value  of  a  varied  relief — Re- 
lief and  climate — Altitude  zones  of  economic  and  cultural 
development — Altitude  and  density  belts  in  tropical  high- 
lands— Increasing  density  where  altitude  confers  safety — 
Geographic  conditions  affecting  density  of  mountain  popu- 
lation— Terrace  agriculture — Its  geographical  distribution 
— Terrace  agriculture  in  mountainous  islands — Among  sav- 
age peoples — Fertilizing  terrace  lands — Economy  of  level 
land — Mountain  pastures  and  stock-raising — Life  and  in- 
dustry of  the  summer  herdsmen — Communal  ownership  of 
mountain  pastures — Hay  making  in  high  mountains — 
Winter  industries  of  mountain  peoples — Overpopulation 
and  emigration — Preventive  checks  to  increase  of  popula- 
tion— Religious  celibacy — Polyandry — Marauding  tenden- 
cies in  mountaineers — Historical  consequences  of  mountain 
raiding — Conquest  of  mountain  regions — Political  dismem- 
berment of  mountain  peoples — Types  of  mountain  states — 
Significance  of  their  small  size — Mountain  isolation  and 
differentiation — Survival  of  primitive  races  in  mountains — 
Diversity  of  peoples  and  dialects — Constriction  of  moun- 
tain areas  of  ethnic  survival — Isolation  and  retardation  of 
mountain  regions — Mental  and  moral  qualities  of  mountain 
people 557 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

THE  INFLUENCES  OF  CLIMATE  UPON  MAN 
Importance  of  climatic  influences — Climate  in  the  interplay  of 
geographic  factors — Its  direct  and  indirect  effects — Cli- 
mate determines  the  habitable  area  of  the  earth — Effect 
of  climate  upon  relief  and  hence  upon  man — Man 's  adapta- 
bility to  climatic  extremes — Temperature  as  modified  by 


xvi  CONTENTS 

oceans  and  winds — Rainfall — Temperature  and  zonal  loca- 
tion— Mutual  reactions  of  contrasted  zones — Isothermal 
lines  in  anthropo-geography — Historical  effects  of  com- 
pressed isotherms — Historical  effects  of  slight  climatic  dif- 
ferences— Their  influence  upon  distribution  of  immigration 
— Temperature  and  race  temperament — Complexity  of  this 
problem — Monotonous  climatic  conditions — Effects  of  Arctic 
cold — Effect  of  monotonous  heat — The  tropics  as  goals 
of  migration — The  problem  of  acclimatization — Historical 
importance  of  the  temperate  zone — Contrast  of  the  seasons 
— Duration  of  the  seasons — Effect  of  long  winters  and 
long  summers — Zones  of  culture — Temperate  zone  as  cradle 

of  civilization  607 

INDEX    .  639 


LIST  OF  MAPS. 

DENSITY  OF  POPULATION  IN  THK  EASTERN  HEMISPHERE 8 

DENSITY  OP  POPULATION  IN  THE  WESTERN  HEMISPHERE 9 

POWELL'S  MAP  OP  INDIAN  LINGUISTIC  STOCKS 54 

PRIMITIVE  INDIAN  STOCKS  OP  SOUTH  AMERICA 101 

ETHNOGRAPHICAL  MAP  OF  INDIA 102 

ETHNOGRAPHICAL  MAP  OF  ASIA 103 

ETHNOGRAPHICAL  MAP  OF  AFRICA 105 

DISTRIBUTION  OF  WILD  AND  CIVILIZED  TRIBES  IN  THE  PHILIPPINES  . .  147 

DISTRIBUTION  OF  POPULATION  IN  THE  PROVINCE  OF  FINMARKEN...  153 

DISTRIBUTION  OF  POPULATION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  1800 156 

THE  SLAV-GERMAN  BOUNDARY  IN  EUROPE 223 

ETHNOGRAPHICAL  MAP  OF  EUSSIA 225 

THE  GERMAN  NORTH  SEA  COAST 243 

ANCIENT   PHOENICIAN   AND   GREEK   COLONIES 251 

RIPARIAN  VILLAGES  OF  THE  LOWER  ST.  LAWRENCE 365 

LAKE  OF  THE  FOUR  FOREST  CANTONS 374 

THE  ANNUAL  RAINFALL  OF  THE  WORLD 484 

THE  CULTURAL  REGIONS  OF  AFRICA  AND  ARABIA 487 

DISTRIBUTION  OF  KELIGIONS  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 513 

DENSITY  OF  POPULATION  IN  ITALY 559 

MEAN  ANNUAL  ISOTHERMS  AND  HEAT  BELTS  . .                                  .  612 


THE  INFLUENCES  OF 
GEOGRAPHIC  ENVIRONMENT 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  OPERATION  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN 

HISTORY 

MAN  is  a  product  of  the  earth's  surface.  This  means  not***0  a 
merely  that  he  is  a  child  of  the  earth,  dust  of  her  dust ;  but  p*  IC  ° 
that  the  earth  has  mothered  him,  fed  him,  set  him  tasks, 
directed  his  thoughts,  confronted  him  with  difficulties  that 
have  strengthened  his  body  and  sharpened  his  wits,  given  him 
his  problems  of  navigation  or  irrigation,  and  at  the  same  time 
whispered  hints  for  their  solution.  She  has  entered  into  his 
bone  and  tissue,  into  his  mind  and  soul.  On  the  mountains 
she  has  given  him  leg  muscles  of  iron  to  climb  the  slope ;  along 
the  coast  she  has  left  these  weak  and  flabby,  but  given  him 
instead  vigorous  development  of  chest  and  arm  to  handle  his 
paddle  or  oar.  In  the  river  valley  she  attaches  him  to  the 
fertile  soil,  circumscribes  his  ideas  and  ambitions  by  a  dull 
round  of  calm,  exacting  duties,  narrows  his  outlook  to  the 
cramped  horizon  of  his  farm.  Up  on  the  wind-swept  plateaus, 
in  the  boundless  stretch  of  the  grasslands  and  the  waterless 
tracts  of  the  desert,  where  he  roams  with  his  flocks  from  pas- 
ture to  pasture  and  oasis  to  oasis,  where  life  knows  much  hard- 
ship but  escapes  the  grind  of  drudgery,  where  the  watching  of 
grazing  herd  gives  him  leisure  for  contemplation,  and  the  wide- 
ranging  life  a  big  horizon,  his  ideas  take  on  a  certain  gigantic 
simplicity ;  religion  becomes  monotheism,  God  becomes  one, 
unrivalled  like  the  sand  of  the  desert  and  the  grass  of  the 
steppe,  stretching  on  and  on  without  break  or  change.  Chew- 
ing over  and  over  the  cud  of  his  simple  belief  as  the  one  food 
of  his  unfed  mind,  his  faith  becomes  fanaticism ;  his  big  spacial 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 


Stability  of 
geographic 
factors  in 
history. 


Persistent 
effect  of 
remoteness. 


ideas,  born  of  that  ceaseless  regular  wandering,  outgrow  the 
land  that  bred  them  and  bear  their  legitimate  fruit  in  wide 
imperial  conquests. 

Man  can  no  more  be  scientifically  studied  apart  from  the 
ground  which  he  tills,  or  the  lands  over  which  he  travels,  or  the 
seas  over  which  he  trades,  than  polar  bear  or  desert  cactus 
can  be  understood  apart  from  its  habitat.  Man's  relations  to 
his  environment  are  infinitely  more  numerous  and  complex 
than  those  of  the  most  highly  organized  plant  or  animal.  So 
complex  are  they  that  they  constitute  a  legitimate  and  neces- 
sary object  of  special  study.  The  investigation  which  they 
receive  in  anthropology,  ethnology,  sociology  and  history  is 
piecemeal  and  partial,  limited  as  to  the  race,  cultural  develop- 
ment, epoch,  country  or  variety  of  geographic  conditions  taken 
into  account.  Hence  all  these  sciences,  together  with  history 
so  far  as  history  undertakes  to  explain  the  causes  of  events, 
fail  to  reach  a  satisfactory  solution  of  their  problems  largely 
because  the  geographic  factor  which  enters  into  them  all  has 
not  been  thoroughly  analyzed.  Man  has  been  so  noisy  about 
the  way  he  has  "conquered  Nature,"  and  Nature  has  been  so 
silent  in  her  persistent  influence  over  man,  that  the  geographic 
factor  in  the  equation  of  human  development  has  been  over- 
looked. 

In  every  problem  of  history  there  are  two  main  factors, 
variously  stated  as  heredity  and  environment,  man  and  his 
geographic  conditions,  the  internal  forces  of  race  and  the  ex- 
ternal forces  of  habitat.  Now  the  geographic  element  in  the 
long  history  of  human  development  has  been  operating 
strongly  and  operating  persistently.  Herein  lies  its  importance. 
It  is  a  stable  force.  It  never  sleeps.  This  natural  environment, 
this  physical  basis  of  history,  is  for  all  intents  and  purposes 
immutable  in  comparison  with  the  other  factor  in  the  problem 
,  plastic,  progressive,  retrogressive  man. 

History  tends  to  repeat  itself  largely  owing  to  this  steady, 
unchanging  geographic  element.  If  the  ancient  Roman  consul 
in  far-away  Britain  often  assumed  an  independence  of  action 
and  initiative  unknown  in  the  provincial  governors  of  Gaul, 
and  if,  centuries  later,  Roman  Catholicism  in  England  main- 
tained a  similar  independence  towards  the  Holy  See,  both  facts 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY  3 

have  their  cause  in  the  remoteness  of  Britain  from  the  center 
of  political  or  ecclesiastical  power  in  Rome.  If  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  Roman  consul  in  Britain  was  duplicated  later 
by  the  attitude  of  the  Thirteen  Colonies  toward  England,  and 
again  within  the  young  Republic  by  the  headstrong  self- 
reliance,  impatient  of  government  authority,  which  charac- 
terized the  early  Trans-Allegheny  commonwealths  in  their  ag- 
gressive Indian  policy,  and  led  them  to  make  war  and  conclude 
treaties  for  the  cession  of  land  like  sovereign  states ;  and  if 
this  attitude  of  independence  in  the  over-mountain  men  reap- 
peared in  a  spirit  of  political  defection  looking  toward  seces- 
sion from  the  Union  and  a  new  combination  with  their  British 
neighbor  on  the  Great  Lakes  or  the  Spanish  beyond  the  Missis- 
sippi, these  are  all  the  identical  effects  of  geographical  remote- 
ness made  yet  more  remote  by  barriers  of  mountain  and  sea. 
This  is  the  long  reach  which  weakens  the  arm  of  authority,  no 
matter  what  the  race  or  country  or  epoch. 

As  with  geographical  remoteness,  so  it  is  with  geographical  Effect  of 
proximity.  The  history  of  the  Greek  peninsula  and  the  Greek  proximity. 
people,  because  of  their  location  at  the  threshold  of  the  Orient, 
has  contained  a  constantly  recurring  Asiatic  element.  This 
comes  out  most  often  as  a  note  of  warning;  like  the  motif  of 
Ortrud  in  the  opera  of  "Lohengrin,"  it  mingles  ominously  in 
every  chorus  of  Hellenic  enterprise  or  pzean  of  Hellenic  vic- 
tory, and  finally  swells  into  a  national  dirge  at  the  Turkish 
conquest  of  the  peninsula.  It  comes  out  in  the  legendary  his- 
tory of  the  Argonautic  Expedition  and  the  Trojan  War;  in 
the  arrival  of  Phoenician  Cadmus  and  Phrygian  Pelops  in 
Grecian  lands ;  in  the  appearance  of  Tyrian  ships  on  the  coast 
of  the  Peloponnesus,  where  they  gather  the  purple-yielding 
murex  and  kidnap  Greek  women.  It  appears  more  conspicu- 
ously in  the  Asiatic  sources  of  Greek  culture ;  more  dramatic- 
ally in  the  Persian  Wars,  in  the  retreat  of  Xenophon's  Ten 
Thousand,  in  Alexander's  conquest  of  Asia,  and  Hellenic  domi- 
nation of  Asiatic  trade  through  Syria  to  the  Mediterranean. 
Again  in  the  thirteenth  century  the  lure  of  the  Levantine  trade 
led  Venice  and  Genoa  to  appropriate  certain  islands  and 
promontories  of  Greece  as  commercial  bases  nearer  to  Asia. 
In  1396  begins  the  absorption  of  Greece  into  the  Asiatic  em- 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 


Persistent 
effect  of 
natural 
barriers. 


pire  of  the  Turks,  the  long  dark  eclipse  of  sunny  Hellas,  till  it 
issues  from  the  shadow  in  1882  with  the  achievement  of  Greek 
independence. 

If  the  factor  is  not  one  of  geographical  location,  but  a 
natural  barrier,  such  as  a  mountain  system  or  a  desert,  its 
effect  is  just  as  persistent.  The  upheaved  mass  of  the  Car- 
pathians served  to  divide  the  westward  moving  tide  of  the  Slavs 
into  two  streams,  diverting  one  into  the  maritime  plain  of 
northern  Germany  and  Poland,  the  other  into  the  channel  of 
the  Danube  Valley  which  guided  them  to  the  Adriatic  and  the 
foot  of  the  Alps.  This  same  range  checked  the  westward  ad- 
vance of  the  mounted  Tartar  hordes.  The  Alps  long  retarded 
Roman  expansion  into  central  Europe,  just  as  they  delayed 
and  obstructed  the  southward  advance  of  the  northern  bar- 
barians. Only  through  the  partial  breaches  in  the  wall  known 
as  passes  did  the  Alps  admit  small,  divided  bodies  of  the 
invaders,  like  the  Cimbri  and  Teutons,  who  arrived,  therefore, 
with  weakened  power  and  at  intervals,  so  that  the  Roman 
forces  had  time  to  gather  their  strength  between  successive 
attacks,  and  thus  prolonged  the  life  of  the  declining  empire. 
So  in  the  Middle  Ages,  the  Alpine  barrier  facilitated  the  resis- 
tance of  Italy  to  the  German  emperors,  trying  to  enforce  their 
claim  upon  this  ancient  seat  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire. 

It  was  by  river-worn  valleys  leading  to  passes  in  the  ridge 
that  Etruscan  trader,  Roman  legion,  barbarian  horde,  and 
German  army  crossed  the  Alpine  ranges.  To-day  well-made 
highways  and  railroads  converge  upon  these  valley  paths  and 
summit  portals,  and  going  is  easier;  but  the  Alps  still  collect 
their  toll,  now  in  added  tons  of  coal  consumed  by  engines  and 
in  higher  freight  rates,  instead  of  the  ancient  imposts  of 
physical  exhaustion  paid  by  pack  animal  and  heavily  ac- 
coutred soldier.  Formerly  these  mountains  barred  the  weak 
and  timid ;  to-day  they  bar  the  poor,  and  forbid  transit  to  all 
merchandise  of  large  bulk  and  small  value  which  can  not  pay 
the  heavy  transportation  charges.  Similarly*  the  wide  barrier 
of  the  Rockies,  prior  to  the  opening  of  the  first  overland  rail- 
road, excluded  all  but  strong-limbed  and  strong-hearted 
pioneers  from  the  fertile  valleys  of  California  and  Oregon, 
just  as  it  excludes  coal  and  iron  even  from  the  Colorado  mines, 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTQRS  IN  HISTORY  5 

and  checks  the  free  movement  of  laborers  to  the  fields  and 
factories  of  California,  thereby  tightening  the  grip  of  the 
labor  unions  upon  Pacific  coast  industries. 

As  the  surface  of  the  earth  presents  obstacles,  so  it  offers  Persistent 
channels  for  the  easy  movement  of  humanity,  grooves  whose  e 
direction    determines   the   destination    of   aimless,   unplanned  made j. ^_ 
migrations,  and  whose  termini  become,  therefore,  regions  of  ways. 
historical  importance.    Along  these  nature-made  highways  his- 
tory repeats  itself.     The  maritime  plain  of  Palestine  has  been 
an  established  route  of  commerce  and  war  from  the  time  of 
Sennacherib  to  Napoleon.1     The  Danube  Valley  has  admitted 
to  central  Europe  a  long  list  of  barbarian  invaders,  covering 
the  period  from  Attila  the  Hun  to  the  Turkish  besiegers  of 
Vienna  in  1683.     The  history  of  the  Danube  Valley  has  been 
one  of  warring  throngs,  of  shifting  political  frontiers,  and 
unassimilated  races ;  but  as  the  river  is  a  great  natural  high- 
wa3r,   every   neighboring   state   wants  to   front   upon  it   and 
strives  to  secure  it  as  a  boundary. 

The  movements  of  peoples  constantly  recur  to  these  old 
grooves.  The  unmarked  path  of  the  voyageur's  canoe,  bring- 
ing out  pelts  from  Lake  Superior  to  the  fur  market  at  Mont- 
real, is  followed  to-day  by  whaleback  steamers  with  their  car- 
goes of  Manitoba  wheat.  To-day  the  Mohawk  depression 
through  the  northern  Appalachians  diverts  some  of  Canada's 
trade  from  the  Great  Lakes  to  the  Hudson,  just  as  in  the 
seventeenth  century  it  enabled  the  Dutch  at  New  Amsterdam 
and  later  the  English  at  Albany  to  tap  the  fur  trade  of 
Canada's  frozen  forests.  Formerly  a  line  of  stream  and  por- 
tage, it  carries  now  the  Erie  Canal  and  New  York  Central 
Railroad.2  Similarly  the  narrow  level  belt  of  land  extending 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Hudson  to  the  eastern  elbow  of  the 
lower  Delaware,  defining  the  outer  margin  of  the  rough  hill 
country  of  northern  New  Jersey  and  the  inner  margin  of  the 
smooth  coastal  plain,  has  been  from  savage  days  such  a  natural 
thoroughfare.  Here  ran  the  trail  of  the  Lenni-Lenapi  In- 
dians ;  a  little  later,  the  old  Dutch  road  between  New  Amster- 
dam and  the  Delaware  trading-posts;  yet  later  the  King's 
Highway  from  New  York  to  Philadelphia.  In  1838  it  be- 
came the  route  of  the  Delaware  and  Raritan  Canal,  and  more 


6 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 


Regions 
of  histori- 
cal similar- 

ity. 


recently  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  between  New  York  and 
Philadelphia.3 

The  early  Aryans,  in  their  gradual  dispersion  over  north- 
western India,  reached  the  Arabian  Sea  chiefly  by  a  route 
running  southward  from  the  Indus-Ganges  divide,  between 
the  eastern  border  of  the  Rajputana  Desert  and  the  western 
foot  of  the  Aravalli  Hills.  The  streams  flowing  down  from 
this  range  across  the  thirsty  plains  unite  to  form  the  Lurii 
River,  which  draws  a  dead-line  to  the  advance  of  the  desert. 
Here  a  smooth  and  well-watered  path  brought  the  early 
Aryans  of  India  to  a  fertile  coast  along  the  Gulf  of  Cambay.4 
In  the  palmy  days  of  the  Mongol  Empire  during  the  seven- 
teenth century,  and  doubtless  much  earlier,  it  became  an  estab- 
lished trade  route  between  the  sea  and  the  rich  cities  of  the 
upper  Ganges.5  Recently  it  determined  the  line  of  the  Raj- 
putana Railroad  from  the  Gulf  of  Cambay  to  Delhi.6  Bary- 
gaza,  the  ancient  seaboard  terminus  of  this  route,  appears  in 
Pliny's  time  as  the  most  famous  emporium  of  western  India, 
the  resort  of  Greek  and  Arab  merchants.7  It  reappears  later 
in  history  with  its  name  metamorphosed  to  Baroche  or  Broach, 
where  in  1616  the  British  established  a  factory  for  trade,8 
but  is  finally  superseded,  under  Portuguese  and  English  rule, 
by  nearby  Surat.  Thus  natural  conditions  fix  the  channels 
in  which  the  stream  of  humanity  most  easily  moves,  deterniim 
within  certain  limits  the  direction  of  its  flow,  the  velocity  and 
volume  of  its  current.  Every  new  flood  tends  to  fit  itself  ap- 
proximately into  the  old  banks,  seeks  first  these  lines  of  least 
resistance,  and  only  when  it  finds  them  blocked  or  pre-empted 
does  it  turn  to  more  difficult  paths. 

Geographical  environment,  through  the  persistence  of  its 
influence,  acquires  peculiar  significance.     Its  effect  is  not  n 
stricted  to  a  given  historical  event  or  epoch,  but,  except  when 
temporarily  met  by  some  strong  counteracting  force,  tend 
make  itself  felt  under  varying  guise  in  all  succeeding  history. 
It  is  the  permanent  element  in  the  shifting   fate  of  races. 
Islands  show  certain  fundamental  points  of  agreement  which 
can  be  distinguished  in  the  economic,  ethnic  and  kprtorical 
development  of  England,  Japan,  Melanesian  Fiji,  Polynesian 
New   Zealand,   and   pre-historic   Crete.      The   great   belt   of 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY  7 

deserts  and  steppes  extending  across  the  Old  World  gives  us  a 
vast  territory  of  rare  historical  uniformity.  From  time  imme- 
morial they  have  borne  and  bred  tribes  of  wandering  herds- 
men ;  they  have  sent  out  the  invading  hordes  who,  in  suc- 
cessive waves  of  conquest,  have  overwhelmed  the  neighboring 
river  lowlands  of  Eurasia  and  Africa.  They  have  given  birth 
in  turn  to  Scythians,  Indo-Aryans,  Avars,  Huns,  Saracens, 
Tartars  and  Turks,  as  to  the  Tuareg  tribes  of  the  Sahara, 
the  Sudanese  and  Bantu  folk  of  the  African  grasslands.  But 
whether  these  various  peoples  have  been  Negroes,  Hamites, 
Semites,  Indo-Europeans  or  Mongolians,  they  have  always 
been  pastoral  nomads.  The  description  given  by  Herodotus 
of  the  ancient  Scythians  is  applicable  in  its  main  features 
to  the  Kirghis  and  Kalmuck  who  inhabit  the  Caspian  plains 
to-day.  The  environment  of  this  dry  grassland  operates  now 
to  produce  the  same  mode  of  life  and  social  organization  as 
it  did  2,400  years  ago;  stamps  the  cavalry  tribes  of  Cossacks 
as  it  did  the  mounted  Huns,  energizes  its  sons  by  its  dry 
bracing  air,  toughens  them  by  its  harsh  conditions  of  life,  or- 
ganizes them  into  a  mobilized  army,  always  moving  with  its 
pastoral  commissariat.  Then  when  population  presses  too 
hard  upon  the  meager  sources  of  subsistence,  when  a  summer 
drought  burns  the  pastures  and  dries  up  the  water-holes,  it 
sends  them  forth  on  a  mission  of  conquest,  to  seek  abundance 
in  the  better  watered  lands  of  their  agricultural  neighbors. 
Again  and  again  the  productive  valleys  of  the  Hoangho, 
Indus,  Ganges,  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  Nile,  Volga,  Dnieper 
and  Danube  have  been  brought  into  subjection  by  the  imperi- 
ous nomads  of  arid  Asia,  just  as  the  "hoe-people"  of  the  Niger 
and  upper  Nile  have  so  often  been  conquered  by  the  herdsmen 
of  the  African  grasslands.  Thus,  regardless  of  race  or  epoch 
— Hyksos  or  Kaffir — history  tends  to  repeat  itself  in  these 
rainless  tracts,  and  involves  the  better  watered  districts  along 
their  borders  when  the  vast  tribal  movements  extend  into  these 
peripheral  lands. 

Climatic  influences  are  persistent,  often  obdurate  in  their  Climatic 
control.     Arid  regions  permit  agriculture  and  sedentary  life  *     uences' 
only  through  irrigation.     The  economic  prosperity  of  Egypt 
to-day  depends  as  completely  upon  the  distribution  of  the  Nile 


8 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 


10 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 


The  re- 
lation of 
geography 
to  history. 


waters  as  in  the  days  of  the  Pharaohs.  The  mantle  of  the 
ancient  Egyptian  priest  has  fallen  upon  the  modern  British 
engineer.  Arctic  explorers  have  succeeded  only  by  imitating 
the  life  of  the  Eskimos,  adopting  their  clothes,  food,  fuel, 
dwellings,  and  mode  of  travel.  Intense  cold  has  checked  both 
native  and  Russian  development  over  that  major  portion  of 
Siberia  lying  north  of  the  mean  annual  isothern  of  0  degree  C. 
(32  degrees  F.)  ;  and  it  has  had  a  like  effect  in  the  correspond- 
ing part  of  Canada.  (Compare  maps  pages  8  and  9.)  It 
allows  these  sub-arctic  lands  scant  resources  and  a  population 
of  less  than  two  to  the  square  mile.  Even  with  the  intrusion  of 
white  colonial  peoples,  it  perpetuates  the  savage  economy  of 
the  native  hunting  tribes,  and  makes  the  fur  trader  their  mod- 
ern exploiter,  whether  he  be  the  Cossack  tribute-gatherer  of  the 
lower  Lena  River,  or  the  factor  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company. 
The  assimilation  tends  to  be  ethnic  as  well  as  economic,  because 
the  severity  of  the  climate  excludes  the  white  woman.  In  the 
same  way  the  Tropics  are  a  vast  melting-pot.  The  debili- 
tating effects  of  heat  and  humidity,  aided  by  tropical  diseases, 
soon  reduce  intruding  peoples  to  the  dead  level  of  economic 
inefficiency  characteristic  of  the  native  races.  These,  as  the 
fittest,  survive  and  tend  to  absorb  the  new-comers,  pointing  to 
hybridization  as  the  simplest  solution  of  the  problem  of 
tropical  colonization. 

The  more  the  comparative  method  is  applied  to  the  study  of 
history — and  this  includes  a  comparison  not  only  of  different 
countries,  but  also  of  successive  epochs  in  the  same  country— 
the  more  apparent  becomes  the  influence  of  the  soil  in  which 
humanity  is  rooted,  the  more  permanent  and  necessary  is 
that  influence  seen  to  be.  Geography's  claim  to  make  scien- 
tific investigation  of  the  physical  conditions  of  historical  events 
is  then  vindicated.  "Which  was  there  first,  geography  or 
history?"  asks  Kant.  And  then  comes  his  answer:  "Geog- 
raphy lies  at  the  basis  of  history."  The  two  are  inseparable. 
History  takes  for  its  field  of  investigation  human  events  in 
various  periods  of  time;  anthropo-geography  studies  exist- 
ence in  various  regions  of  terrestrial  space.  But  all  historical 
development  takes  place  on  the  earth's  surface,  and  therefore 
is  more  or  less  molded  by  its  geographic  setting.  Geography, 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY          11 

to  reach  accurate  conclusions,  must  compare  the  operation  of 
its  factors  in  different  historical  periods  and  at  different  stages 
of  cultural  development.  It  therefore  regards  history  in  no 
small  part  as  a  succession  of  geographical  factors  embodied 
in  events.  Back  of  Massachusetts'  passionate  abolition  move- 
ment, it  sees  the  granite  soil  and  boulder-strewn  fields  of  New 
England ;  back  of  the  South's  long  fight  for  the  maintenance 
of  slavery,  it  sees  the  rich  plantations  of  tidewater  Virginia 
and  the  teeming  fertility  of  the  Mississippi  bottom  lands. 
This  is  the  significance  of  Herder's  saying  that  "history  is 
geography  set  into  motion."  What  is  to-day  a  fact  of  geog- 
raphy becomes  to-morrow  a  factor  of  history.  The  two  sci- 
ences cannot  be  held  apart  without  doing  violence  to  both, 
without  dismembering  what  is  a  natural,  vital  whole.  All  his- 
torical problems  ought  to  be  studied  geographically  and  all 
geographic  problems  must  be  studied  historically.  Ever}'  map 
has  its  date.  Those  in  the  Statistical  Atlas  of  the  United 
States  showing  the  distribution  of  population  from  1790  to 
1890  embody  a  mass  of  history  as  well  as  of  geography.  A 
map  of  France  or  the  Russian  Empire  has  a  long  historical 
perspective ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  without  that  map  no 
change  of  ethnic  or  political  boundary,  no  modification  in 
routes  of  communication,  no  system  of  frontier  defences  or  of 
colonization,  no  scheme  of  territorial  aggrandizement  can  be 
understood.  ' 

The  study  of  physical  environment  as  a  factor  in  history  Multi- 
was  unfortunately  brought  into  disrepute  by  extravagant  and  P 
ill-founded    generalization,    before    it   became    the   object   of  factors 
investigation  according  to  modern  scientific  methods.     And 
even  to-day  principles  advanced  in  the  name  of  anthropo- 
geography  are   often   superficial,   inaccurate,   based   upon   a 
body  of  data  too  limited  as  to  space  and  time,  or  couched  in 
terms  of  unqualified  statement  which  exposes  them  to  criticism 
or  refutation.     Investigators  in  this  field,  moreover,  are  prone 
to  get  a  squint  in  their  eye  that  makes  them  see  one  geographic 
factor  to  the  exclusion  of  the  rest;  whereas  it  belongs  to  the 
very  nature  of  physical  environment  to  combine  a  whole  group 
of  influences,  working  all  at  the  same -time  under  the  law  of 
the  resolution  of  forces.     In  this  plexus  of  influences,  some 


12         GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 

operate  in  one  direction  and  some  in  another;  now  one  loses 
its  beneficent  effect  like  a  medicine  long  used  or  a  garment 
outgrown;  another  waxes  in  power,  reinforced  by  a  new  geo- 
graphic factor  which  has  been  released  from  dormancy  by  the 
expansion  of  the  known  world,  or  the  progress  of  invention 
and  of  human  development. 

Evolution  These  complex  geographic  influences  cannot  be  analyzed 

p  geograph-  an(j  tne|r  strength  estimated  except  from  the  standpoint  of 
lations  evolution.     That  is  one  reason  these  half-baked  geographic 

principles  rest  heavy  on  our  mental  digestion.  They  have 
been  formulated  without  reference  to  the  all-important  fact 
that  the  geographical  relations  of  man,  like  his  social  and 
political  organization,  are  subject  to  the  law  of  development. 
Just  as  the  embryo  state  found  in  the  primitive  Saxon  tribe 
has  passed  through  many  phases  in  attaining  the  political 
character  of  the  present  British  Empire,  so  every  stage  in  this 
maturing  growth  has  been  accompanied  or  even  preceded  by 
a  steady  evolution  of  the  geographic  relations  of  the  English 
people. 

Owing  to  the  evolution  of  geographic  relations,  the  physi- 
cal environment  favorable  to  one  stage  of  development  may 
be  adverse  to  another,  and  vice  versa.  For  instance,  a  small, 
isolated  and  protected  habitat,  like  that  of  Egypt,  Phrenicia, 
Crete  and  Greece,  encourages  the  birth  and  precocious  growth 
of  civilization;  but  later  it  may  cramp  progress,  and  lend 
the  stamp  of  arrested  development  to  a  people  who  were  once 
the  model  for  all  their  little  world.  Open  and  wind-swept 
Russia,  lacking  these  small,  warm  nurseries  where  Nature  could 
cuddle  her  children,  has  bred  upon  its  boundless  plains  a  mas- 
sive, untutored,  homogeneous  folk,  fed  upon  the  crumbs  of 
culture  that  have  fallen  from  the  richer  tables  of  Europe. 
But  that  item  of  area  is  a  variable  quantity  in  the  equation. 
It  changes  its  character  at  a  higher  stage  of  cultural  develop- 
ment. Consequently,  when  the  Muscovite  people,  instructed 
by  the  example  of  western  Europe,  shall  have  grown  up  intel- 
lectually, economically  and  politically  to  their  big  territory, 
its  area  will  become  a  great  national  asset.  Russia  will  come 
into  its  own,  heir  to  a  long-withheld  inheritance.  Many  of 
its  previous  geographic  disadvantages  will  vanish,  like  the 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY         13 

diseases  of  childhood,  while  its  massive  size  will  dwarf  many 
previous  advantages  of  its  European  neighbors. 

This  evolution  of  geographic  relations  applies  not  only  to  Evolution 
the  local  environment,  but  also  to  the  wider  world  relations  of  °f  world 
a  people.  Greeks  and  Syrians,  English  and  Japanese,  take  relations- 
a  different  rank  among  the  nations  of  the  earth  to-day  from 
that  held  by  their  ancestors  2,000  years  ago,  simply  because 
the  world  relations  of  civilized  peoples  have  been  steadily  ex- 
panding s-ince  those  far-back  days  of  Tyrian  and  Athenian  su- 
premacy. The  period  of  maritime  discoveries  in  the  fifteenth 
and  sixteenth  centuries  shifted  the  foci  of  the  world  relations 
of  European  states  from  enclosed  seas  to  the  rim  of  the  Atlan- 
tic. Venice  and  Genoa  gave  way  to  Cadiz  and  Lagos,  just  as 
sixteen  centuries  before  Corinth  and  Athens  had  yielded  their 
ascendency  to  Rome  and  Ostia.  The  keen  but  circumscribed 
trade  of  the  Baltic,  which  gave  wealth  and  historical  pre- 
eminence to  Liibeck  and  the  other  Hanse  Towns  of  northern 
Germany  from  the  twelfth  to  the  seventeenth  century,  lost  its 
relative  importance  when  the  Atlantic  became  the  maritime 
field  of  history.  Maritime  leadership  passed  westward  from 
Liibeck  and  Stralsund  to  Amsterdam  and  Bristol,  as  the  his- 
torical horizon  widened.  England,  prior  to  this  sudden  dis- 
location, lay  on  the  outskirts  of  civilized  Europe,  a  terminal 
land,  not  a  focus.  The  peripheral  location  which  retarded 
her  early  development  became  a  source  of  power  when  she 
accumulated  sufficient  density  of  population  for  colonizing 
enterprises,  and  when  maritime  discovery  opened  a  way  to 
trans-oceanic  lands.9 

Meanwhile,  local  geographic  advantages  in  the  old  basins 
remain  the  same,  although  they  are  dwarfed  by  the  develop- 
ment of  relatively  greater  advantages  elsewhere.  The  broken 
coastline,  limited  area  and  favorable  position  of  Greece  make 
its  people  to-day  a  nation  of  seamen,  and  enable  them  to  ab- 
sorb by  their  considerable  merchant  fleet  a  great  part  of  the 
trade  of  the  eastern  Mediterranean,10  just  as  they  did  in  the 
days  of  Pericles ;  but  that  youthful  Aegean  world  which  once 
constituted  so  large  a  part  of  the-rrikoumene,  has  shrunken 
to  a  modest  province,  and  its  highways  to  local  paths.  The 
coast  cities  of  northern  Germany  still  maintain  a  large  com- 


14         GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 

merce  in  the  Baltic,  but  no  longer  hold  the  pre-eminence  of 
the  old  Hanse  Towns.  The  glory  of  the  Venetian  Adriatic  is 
gone;  but  that  the  sea  has  still  a  local  significance  is  proven 
by  the  vast  sums  spent  by  Austria  and  Hungary  on  their 
hand-made  harbors  of  Trieste  and  Fiume.11  The  analytical 
geographer,  therefore,  while  studying  a  given  combination  of 
geographic  forces,  must  be  prepared  for  a  momentous  read- 
justment and  a  new  interplay  after  any  marked  turning  point 
in  the  economic,  cultural,  or  world  relations  of  a  people. 
Interplay  of  Skepticism  as  to  the  effect  of  geographic  conditions  upon 
geographic  human  development  is  apparently  justifiable,  owing  to  the 
multiplicity  of  the  underlying  causes  and  the  difficulty  of 
distinguishing  between  stronger  and  weaker  factors  on  the 
one  hand,  as  between  permanent  and  temporary  effects  on 
the  other.  We  see  the  result,  but  find  it  difficult  to  state  the 
equation  producing  this  result.  But  the  important  thing  is 
to  avoid  seizing  upon  one  or  two  conspicuous  geographic  ele- 
ments in  the  problem  and  ignoring  the  rest.  The  physical 
environment  of  a  people  consists  of  all  the  natural  conditions 
to  which  they  have  been  subjected,  not  merely  a  part.  Geog- 
/  raphy  admits  no  single  blanket  theory.  The  slow  historical 
development  of  the  Russian  folk  has  been  due  to  many  geo- 
graphic causes — to  excess  of  cold  and  deficiency  of  rain,  an 
outskirt  location  on  the  Asiatic  border  of  Europe  exposed  to 
the  attacks  of  nomadic  hordes,  a  meager  and,  for  the  most 
part,  ice-bound  coast  which  was  slowly  acquired,  an  undiversi- 
fied  surface,  a  lack  of  segregated  regions  where  an  infant  civil- 
ization might  be  cradled,  and  a  vast  area  of  unfenced  plains 
wherein  the  national  energies  spread  out  thin  and  dissipated 
themselves.  The  better  Baltic  and  Black  Sea  coasts,  the  fer- 
tility of  its  Ukraine  soil,  and  location  next  to  wide-awake  Ger- 
many along  the  western  frontier  have  helped  to  accelerate 
progress,  but  the  slow-moving  body  carried  too  heavy  a  drag. 
The  law  of  the  resolutions  of  forces  applies  in  geography  as 
in  the  movement  of  planets.  Failure  to  recognize  this  fact 
often  enables  superficial  critics  of  anthropo-geography  to 
make  a  brave  show  of  argument.  The  analysis  of  these  inter- 
acting forces  and  of  their  various  combinations  requires  care- 
ful investigation.  Let  us  consider  the  interplay  of  the  forces 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY         15 

of  land  and  sea  apparent  in  every  country  with  a  maritime  Land  and 
location.  In  some  cases  a  small,  infertile,  niggardly  countr}7  Bea  in  co~ 
conspires  with  a  beckoning  sea  to  drive  its  sons  out  upon  the  oper  on* 
deep ;  in  others  a  wide  territory  with  a  generous  soil  keeps  its 
well-fed  children  at  home  and  silences  the  call  of  the  sea.  In 
ancient  Phoenicia  and  Greece,  in  Norway,  Finland,  New  Eng- 
land, in  ^avage  Chile  and  Tierra  del  Fuego,  and  the  Indian 
coast  district  of  British  Columbia  and  southern  Alaska,  a 
long,  broken  shoreline,  numerous  harbors,  outlying  islands, 
abundant  timber  for  the  construction  of  ships,  difficult  com- 
munication by  land,  all  tempted  the  inhabitants  to  a  seafaring 
life.  While  the  sea  drew,  the  land  drove  in  the  same  direction. 
There  a  hilly  or  mountainous  interior  putting  obstacles  in  the 
way  of  landward  expansion,  sterile  slopes,  a  paucity  of  level, 
arable  land,  an  excessive  or  deficient  rainfall  withholding  from 
agriculture  the  reward  of  tillage — some  or  all  of  these  factors 
combined  to  compel  the  inhabitants  to  seek  on  the  sea  the  live- 
lihood denied  by  the  land.  Here  both  forces  worked  in  the 
same  direction. 

In  England  conditions  were  much  the  same,  and  from  the 
sixteenth  century  produced  there  a  predominant  maritime  de- 
velopment which  was  due  not  solely  to  a  long  indented  coast- 
line and  an  exceptional  location  for  participating  in  European 
and  American  trade.  Its  limited  island  area,  its  large  extent 
of  rugged  hills  and  chalky  soil  fit  only  for  pasturage,  and 
the  lack  of  a  really  generous  natural  endowment,12  made  it 
slow  to  answer  the  demands  of  a  growing  population,  till  the 
industrial  development  of  the  nineteenth  century  exploited 
its  mineral  wealth.  So  the  English  turned  to  the  sea — to 
fish,  to  trade,  to  colonize.  Holland's  conditions  made  for  the 
same  development.  She  united  advantages  of  coastline  and 
position  with  a  small  infertile  territory,  consisting  chiefly  of 
water-soaked  grazing  lands.  When  at  the  zenith  of  her  mari- 
time development,  a  native  authority  estimated  that  the  soil 
of  Holland  could  not  support  more  than  one-eighth  of  her 
inhabitants.  The  meager  products  of  the  land  had  to  be  eked 
out  by  the  harvest  of  the  sea.  Fish  assumed  an  important 
place  in  the  diet  of  the  Dutch,  and  when  a  process  of  curing 
it  was  discovered,  laid  the  foundation  of  Holland's  export 


16         GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 

trade.  A  geographical  location  central  to  the  Baltic  and 
North  Sea  countries,  and  accessible  to  France  and  Portugal, 
combined  with  a  position  at  the  mouth  of  the  great  German 
rivers  made  it  absorb  the  carrying  trade  of  northern  Europe.13 
Land  and  sea  cooperated  in  its  maritime  development. 
Land  Often  the  forces  of  land  and  sea  are  directly  opposed.  If  a 

and  sea  country's  geographic  conditions  are  favorable  to  agriculture 
and  offer  room  for  growth  of  population,  the  land  forces  pre- 
vail, because  man  is  primarily  a  terrestrial  animal.  Such  a 
country  illustrates  what  Chisholm,  with  Attic  nicety  of  speech, 
calls  "the  influence  of  bread-power  on  history,"14  as  opposed 
to  Mahan's  sea-power.  France,  like  England,  had  a  long 
coastline,  abundant  harbors,  and  an  excellent  location  for 
maritime  supremacy  and  colonial  expansion ;  but  her  larger 
area  and  greater  amount  of  fertile  soil  put  off  the  hour  of  a 
redundant  population  such  as  England  suffered  from  even  in 
Henry  VIII's  time.  Moreover,  in  consequence  of  steady  con- 
tinental expansion  from  the  twelfth  to  the  eighteenth  century 
and  a  political  unification  which  made  its  area  more  effective 
for  the  support  of  the  people,  the  French  of  Richelieu's  time, 
except  those  from  certain  districts,  took  to  the  sea,  not  by 
national  impulse  as  did  the  English  and  Dutch,  but  rather 
under  the  spur  of  government  initiative.  They  therefore 
achieved  far  less  in  maritime  trade  and  colonization.15  In 
ancient  Palestine,  a  long  stretch  of  coast,  poorly  equipped 
with  harbors  but  accessible  to  the  rich  Mediterranean  trade, 
failed  to  offset  the  attraction  of  the  gardens  and  orchards  of 
the  Jezreel  Valley  and  the  pastures  of  the  Judean  hills,  or  to 
overcome  the  land-born  predilections  and  aptitudes  of  the 
desert-bred  Jews.  Similarly,  the  river-fringed  peninsulas  of 
Virginia  and  Maryland,  opening  wide  their  doors  to  the  in- 
coming sea,  were  powerless,  nevertheless,  to  draw  the  settlers 
away  from  the  riotous  productiveness  of  the  wide  tidewater 
plains.  Here  again  the  geographic  force  of  the  land  out- 
weighed that  of  the  sea  and  became  the  dominant  factor  in 
directing  the  activities  of  the  inhabitants. 

The  two  antagonistic  geographic  forces  may  be  both  of  the 
land,  one  born  of  a  country's  topography,  the  other  of  its 
location.  Switzerland's  history  has  for  centuries  shown  the 


17 

conflict  of  two  political  policies,  one  a  policy  of  cantonal 
and  communal  independence,  which  has  sprung  from  the  di- 
vision of  that  mountainous  country  into  segregated  districts, 
and  the  other  one  of  political  centralization,  dictated  by  the 
necessity  for  cooperation  to  meet  the  dangers  of  Switzerland's 
central  location  mid  a  circle  of  larger  and  stronger  neighbors. 
Local  geographic  conditions  within  the  Swiss  territory  fixed 
the  national  ideal  as  a  league  of  "sovereign  cantons,"  to  use 
the  term  of  their  constitution,  enjoying  a  maximum  of  indi- 
vidual rights  and  privileges,  and  tolerating  a  minimum  of 
interference  from  the  central  authority.  Here  was  physical 
dismemberment  coupled  with  mutual  political  repulsion.  But 
a  location  at  the  meeting'  place  of  French,  German,  Austrian 
and  Italian  frontiers  laid  upon  them  the  distasteful  necessity 
of  union  within  to  withstand  aggressions  crowding  upon  them 
from  without.  Hence  the  growth  of  the  Swiss  constitution 
since  1798  has  meant  a  fight  of  the  Confederation  against 
the  canton  in  behalf  of  general  rights,  expanding  the  functions 
of  the  central  government,  contracting  those  of  canton  and 
commune.16 

Every  country  forms  an  independent  whole,  and  as  such  ^ocal  and 

finds  its  national  history  influenced  by  its  local  climate,  soil,  n 

.  .  ...         geographic 

relief,  its  location  whether  inland  or  maritime,  its  river  high-  fact0rs. 

ways,  and  its  boundaries  of  mountain,  sea,  or  desert.  But  it 
is  also  a  link  in  a  great  chain  of  lands,  and  therefore  may  feel 
a  shock  or  vibration  imparted  at  the  remotest  end.  The  grad- 
ual desiccation  of  western  Asia  which  took  a  fresh  start  about 
2,000  years  ago  caused  that  great  exodus  and  displacement 
of  peoples  known  as  the  Volkerzcanderung,  and  thus  con- 
tributed to  the  downfall  of  Rome;  it  was  one  factor  in  the 
Saxon  conquest  of  Britain  and  the  final  peopling  of  central 
Europe.  The  impact  of  the  Turkish  hordes  hurling  them- 
selves against  the  defenses  of  Constantinople  in  1453  was  felt 
only  forty  years  afterward  by  the  far-off  shores  of  savage 
America.  Earlier  still  it  reached  England  as  the  revival  of 
learning,  and  it  gave  Portugal  a  shock  which  started  its  navi- 
gators towards  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  in  their  search  for  a 
sea  route  to  India.  The  history  of  South  Africa  is  intimately 
connected  with  the  Isthmus  of  Suez.  It  owes  its  Portuguese, 


18 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 


Direct  and 
indirect 
effects  of 
environ- 
ment. 


Dutch,  and  English  populations  to  that  barrier  on  the  Medi- 
terranean pathway  to  the  Orient;  its  importance  as  a  wny 
station  on  the  outside  route  to  India  fluctuates  with  every 
crisis  in  the  history  of  Suez. 

The  geographic  factors  in  history  appear  now  as  conspicu 
ous  direct  effects  of  environment,  such  as  the  forest  warfare 
of  the  American  Indian  or  the  irrigation  works  of  the  Pueblo 
tribes,  now  as  a  group  of  indirect  effects,  operating  through 
the  economic,  social  and  political  activities  of  a  people.  These 
remoter  secondary  results  are  often  of  supreme  importance; 
they  are  the  ones  which  give  the  final  stamp  to  the  national 
temperament  and  character,  and  yet  in  them  the  causal  con- 
nection between  environment  and  development  is  far  from  ob- 
vious. They  have,  therefore,  presented  pitfalls  to  the  precipi- 
tate theorizer.  He  has  either  interpreted  them  as  the  direct 
effect  of  some  geographic  cause  from  which  they  were  wholly 
divorced  and  thus  arrived  at  conclusions  which  further  investi- 
gation failed  to  sustain ;  or  seeing  no  direct  and  obvious  con- 
nection, he  has  denied  the  possibility  of  a  generalization. 

Montesquieu  ascribes  the  immutability  of  religion,  manners, 
custom  and  laws  in  India  and  other  Oriental  countries  to  their 
warm  climate.17  Buckle  attributes  a  highly  wrought  imagina- 
tion and  gross  superstition  to  all  people,  like  those  of  India, 
living  in  the  presence  of  great  mountains  and  vast  plains, 
knowing  Nature  only  in  its  overpowering  aspects,  which  excite 
the  fancy  and  paralyze  reason.  He  finds,  on  the  other  hand, 
an  early  predominance  of  reason  in  the  inhabitants  of  a  coun- 
try like  ancient  Greece,  where  natural  features  are  on  a  small 
scale,  more  comprehensible,  nearer  the  measure  of  man  him- 
self.18 The  scientific  geographer,  grown  suspicious  of  the  om- 
nipotence of  climate  and  cautious  of  predicating  immediate 
psychological  effects  which  are  easy  to  assert  but  difficult  to 
prove,  approaches  the  problem  more  indirectly  and  reaches  a 
different  solution.  He  finds  that  geographic  conditions  have 
condemned  India  to  isolation.  On  the  land  side,  a  great  sweep 
of  high  mountains  has  restricted  intercourse  with  the  interior ; 
on  the  sea  side,  the  deltaic  swamps  of  the  Indus  and  Ganges 
Rivers  and  an  unbroken  shoreline,  backed  by  mountains  on  the 
west  of  the  peninsula  and  by  coastal  marshes  and  lagoons  on 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY          19 

the  east,  have  combined  to  reduce  its  accessibility  from  the 
ocean.  The  effect  of  such  isolation  is  ignorance,  superstition, 
and  the  early  crystallization  of  thought  and  custom.  Ig- 
norance involves  the  lack  of  material  for  comparison,  hence  a 
restriction  of  the  higher  reasoning  processes,  and  an  unscien- 
tific attitude  of  mind  which  gives  imagination  free  play.  In 
contrast,  the  accessibilty  of  Greece  and  its  focal  location  in  the 
ancient  world  made  it  an  intellectual  clearing-house  for  the 
eastern  Mediterranean.  The  general  information  gathered 
there  afforded  material  for  wide  comparison.  It  fed  the  bril- 
liant reason  of  the  Athenian  philosopher  and  the  trained 
imagination  which  produced  the  masterpieces  of  Greek  art  and 
literature. 

Heinrich  von  Treitschke,  in  his  recent  "Politik,"  imitates  Indirect 
the  direct  inference  of  Buckle  when  he  ascribes  the  absence  mental 
of  artistic  and  poetic  development  in  Switzerland  and  the  Al-  effects< 
pine  lands  to  the  overwhelming  aspect  of  nature  there,  its 
majestic  sublimity  which  paralyzes  the  mind.19  He  reinforces 
his  position  by  the  fact  that,  by  contrast,  the  lower  mountains 
and  hill  country  of  Swabia,  Franconia  and  Thuringia,  where 
nature  is  gentler,  stimulating,  appealing,  and  not  overpower- 
ing, have  produced  many  poets  and  artists.  The  facts  are 
incontestable.  They  reappear  in  France  in  the  geographical 
distribution  of  the  awards  made  by  the  Paris  Salon  of  1896. 
Judged  by  these  awards,  the  rough  highlands  of  Savoy,  Al- 
pine Provence,  the  massive  eastern  Pyrenees,  and  the  Auvergne 
Plateau,  together  with  the  barren  peninsula  of  Brittany,  are 
singularly  lacking  in  artistic  instinct,  while  art  flourishes  in 
all  the  river  lowlands  of  France.  Moreover,  French  men  of 
letters,  by  the  distribution  of  their  birthplaces,  are  essentially 
products  of  fluvial  valleys  and  plains,  rarely  of  upland  and 
mountain.20 

This  contrast  has  been  ascribed  to  a  fundamental  ethnic 
distinction  between  the  Teutonic  population  of  the  lowlands 
and  the  Alpine  or  Celtic  stock  which  survives  in  the  isolation 
of  highland  and  peninsula,  thus  making  talent  an  attribute 
of  race.  But  the  Po  Valley  of  northern  Italy,  whose  popula- 
tion contains  a  strong  infusion  of  this  supposedly  stultifying 
Alpine  blood,  and  the  neighboring  lowlands  and  hill  country 


£0 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 


Indirect 
effects  in 
differentia- 
tion of 
colonial 
peoples. 


of  Tuscany  show  an  enormous  preponderance  of  intellectual 
and  artistic  power  over  the  highlands  of  the  peninsula.21 
Hence  the  same  contrast  appears  among  different  races  under- 
like  geographic  conditions.  Moreover,  in  France  other  social 
phenomena,  such  as  suicide,  divorce,  decreasing  birth-rate, 
and  radicalism  in  politics,  show  this  same  startling  parallelism 
of  geographic  distribution,22  and  these  cannot  be  attributed 
to  the  stimulating  or  depressing  effect  of  natural  scenery 
upon  the  human  mind. 

Mountain  regions  discourage  the  budding  of  genius  because 
they  are  areas  of  isolation,  confinement,  remote  from  the  great 
currents  of  men  and  ideas  that  move  along  the  river  valleys. 
They  are  regions  of  much  labor  and  little  leisure,  of  poverty 
to-day  and  anxiety  for  the  morrow,  of  toil-cramped  hands  and 
toil-dulled  brains.  In  the  fertile  alluvial  plains  are  wealth, 
leisure,  contact  with  many  minds,  large  urban  centers  where 
commodities  and  ideas  are  exchanged.  The  two  contrasted  en- 
vironments produce  directly  certain  economic  and  social  re- 
sults, which,  in  turn,  become  the  causes  of  secondary  intel- 
lectual and  artistic  effects.  The  low  mountains  of  central 
Germany  which  von  Treitschke  cites  as  homes  of  poets  and 
artists,  owing  to  abundant  and  varied  mineral  wealth,  are  the 
seats  of  active  industries  and  dense  populations,23  while  their 
low  reliefs  present  no  serious  obstacle  to  the  numerous  high- 
ways across  them.  They,  therefore,  afford  all  conditions  for 
culture. 

Let  us  take  a  different  example.  The  rapid  modification  in 
physical  and  mental  constitution  of  the  English  transplanted 
to  North  America,  South  Africa,  Australia  and  New  Zealand 
has  been  the  result  of  several  geographic  causes  working 
through  the  economic  and  social  media ;  but  it  has  been 
ascribed  by  Darwin  and  others  to  the  effect  of  climate. 
The  prevailing  energy  and  initiative  of  colonists  have 
been  explained  by  the  stimulating  atmosphere  of  their  new 
homes.  Even  Natal  has  not  escaped  this  soft  impeachment. 
But  the  enterprise  of  colonials  has  cropped  out  under  almost 
every  condition  of  heat  and  cold,  aridity  and  humidity,  of  a 
habitat  at  sea-level  and  on  high  plateau.  This  blanket  theory 
of  climate  cannot,  therefore,  cover  the  case.  Careful  analysis 


21 

supersedes  it  by  a  whole  group  of  geographic  factors  working 
directly  and  indirectly.  The  first  of  these  was  the  dividing 
ocean  which,  prior  to  the  introduction  of  cheap  ocean  trans- 
portation and  bustling  steerage  agents,  made  a  basis  of  artifi- 
cial selection.  Then  it  was  the  man  of  abundant  energy  who, 
cramped  by  the  narrow  environment  of  a  Norwegian  farm  or 
Irish  bog,  came  over  to  America  to  take  up  a  quarter-section 
of  prairie  land  or  rise  to  the  eminence  of  Boston  police  ser- 
geant. The  Scotch  immigrants  in  America  who  fought  in 
the  Civil  War  were  nearly  two  inches  taller  than  the  average 
in  the  home  country.24  But  the  ocean  barrier  culled  superior 
qualities  of  mind  and  character  also — independence  of  political 
and  religious  conviction,  and  the  courage  of  those  convictions, 
whether  found  in  royalist  or  Puritan,  Huguenot  or  English 
Catholic. 

Such  colonists  in  a  remote  country  were  necessarily  few  and  Indirect 
could  not  be  readily  reinforced  from  home.     Their  new  and  en*ect 

isolated  geographical  environment  favored  variation.     Hered-  . 

.    .         ,  „  T  isolation, 

ity  passed  on  the  characteristics  of  a  small,  highly  selected 

group.  The  race  was  kept  pure  from  intermixture  with  the 
aborigines  of  the  country,  owing  to  the  social  and  cultural 
abyss  which  separated  them,  and  to  the  steady  withdrawal  of 
the  natives  before  the  advance  of  the  whites.  The  homogeneity 
of  island  peoples  seems  to  indicate  that  individual  variations 
are  in  time  communicated  by  heredity  to  a  whole  population 
under  conditions  of  isolation ;  and  in  this  way  modifications 
due  to  artificial  selection  and  a  changed  environment  become 
widely  spread. 

Nor  is  this  all.  The  modified  type  soon  becomes  established, 
because  the  abundance  of  land  at  the  disposal  of  the  colonists 
and  the  consequent  better  conditions  of  living  encourage  a 
rapid  increase  of  population.  A  second  geographic  factor  of 
mere  area  here  begins  to  operate.  Ease  in  gaining  subsistence, 
the  greater  independence  of  the  individual  and  the  family, 
emancipation  from  carking  care,  the  hopeful  attitude  of  mind 
engendered  by  the  consciousness  of  an  almost  unlimited  oppor- 
tunity and  capacity  for  expansion,  the  expectation  of  large 
returns  upon  labor,  and,  finally,  the  profound  influence  of 
this  hopefulness  upon  the  national  character,  all  combined, 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 


General 
importance 
of  indirect 
effects. 


produce  a  social  rejuvenation  of  the  race.  New  conditions 
present  new  problems  which  call  for  prompt  and  original  solu- 
tion, make  a  demand  upon  the  ingenuity  and  resourcefulness 
of  the  individual,  and  therefore  work  to  the  same  end  as  his 
previous  removal  from  the  paraly/ing  effect  of  custom  in  the 
old  home  country.  Activity  is  youth  and  sluggishness  or  par- 
alysis is  age.  Hence  the  energy,  initiative,  adaptability,  and 
receptivity  to  new  ideas — all  youthful  qualities — which  char- 
acterize the  Anglo-Saxon  American  as  well  as  the  English  Afri- 
cander, can  be  traced  back  to  the  stimulating  influences,  not  of 
a  bracing  or  variable  climate,  but  of  the  abundant  opportuni- 
ties offered  by  a  great,  rich,  unexploilcd  country.  Variation 
under  new  natural  conditions,  when  safe-guarded  by  isolation, 
tends  to  produce  modification  of  the  colonial  type ;  this  is  the 
direct  effect  of  a  changed  environment.  But  the  new  econ- 
omic and  social  activities  of  a  transplanted  people  become  the 
vehicle  of  a  mass  of  indirect  geographic  influences  which  con- 
tribute to  the  differentiation  of  the  national  character. 

The  tendency  to  overlook  such  links  between  conspicuous 
effects  and  their  remote,  less  evident  geographic  causes  has 
been  common  in  geographic  investigation.  This  direct  rather 
than  indirect  approach  to  the  heart  of  the  problem  has  led  to 
false  inferences  or  to  the  assumption  that  reliable  conclusions 
were  impossible.  Environment  influences  the  higher,  mental 
life  of  a  people  chiefly  through  the  medium  of  their  economic 
and  social  life;  hence  its  ultimate  effects  should  be  traced 
through  the  latter  back  to  the  underlying  cause.  But  rarely 
has  this  been  done.  Even  so  astute  a  geographer  as  Strabo, 
though  he  recognizes  the  influence  of  geographic  isolation  in 
differentiating  dialects  and  customs  in  Greece,25  ascribes  some 
national  characteristics  to  the  nature  of  the  country,  especially 
to  its  climate,  and  the  others  to  education  and  institutions. 
He  thinks  that  the  nature  of  their  respective  lands  had  nothing 
to  do  with  making  the  Athenians  cultured,  the  Spartans  and 
Thebans  ignorant ;  that  the  predilection  for  natural  science 
in  Babylonia  and  Egypt  was  not  a  result  of  environment 
but  of  the  institutions  and  education  of  those  countries.28  But 
here  arise  the  questions,  how  far  custom  and  education  in  their 
turn  depend  upon  environment ;  to  what  degree  natural  condi- 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY         23 

tions,  molding  economic  and  political  development,  may 
through  them  fundamentally  affect  social  customs,  education, 
culture,  and  the  dominant  intellectual  aptitudes  of  a  people. 
It  is  not  difficult  to  see,  back  of  the  astronomy  and  mathe- 
matics and  hydraulics  of  Egypt,  the  far  off  sweep  of  the  rain- 
laden  monsoons  against  the  mountains  of  Abyssinia  and  the 
creeping  of  the  tawny  Nile  flood  over  that  river-born  oasis. 

Plutarch  states  in  his  "Solon"  that  after  the  rebellion  of  Indirect 
Kylon  in  612  B.C.  the  Athenian  people  were  divided  into  as  political 
many  political  factions  as  there  were  physical  types  of  country  a°d 
in  Attica.  The  mountaineers,  who  were  the  poorest  party, 
wanted  something  like  a  democracy ;  the  people  of  the  plains, 
comprising  the  greatest  number  of  rich  families,  were  clamor- 
ous for  an  oligarchy  ;  the  coast  population  of  the  south,  inter- 
mediate both  in  social  position  and  wealth,  wanted  something 
between  the  two.  The  same  three-fold  division  appeared  again 
in  564  B.C.  on  the  usurpation  of  Peisistratus.27  Here  the 
connection  between  geographic  condition  and  political  opinion 
is  clear  enough,  though  the  links  are  agriculture  and  com- 
merce. New  England's  opposition  to  the  War  of  1812,  cul- 
minating in  the  threat  of  secession  of  the  Hartford  Conven- 
tion, can  be  traced  back  through  the  active  maritime  trade 
to  the  broken  coastline  and  unproductive  soil  of  that  glaciated 
country. 

In  all  democratic  or  representative  forms  of  government 
permitting  free  expression  of  popular  opinion,  history  shows 
that  division  into  political  parties  tends  to  follow  geographical 
lines  of  cleavage.  In  our  own  Civil  War  the  dividing  line 
between  North  and  South  did  not  always  run  east  and  west. 
The  mountain  area  of  the  Southern  Appalachians  supported 
the  Union  and  drove  a  wedge  of  disaffection  into  the  heart  of 
the  South.  Mountainous  West  Virginia  was  politically  op- 
posed to  the  tidewater  plains  of  old  Virginia,  because  slave 
labor  did  not  pay  on  the  barren  "upright"  farms  of  the  Cum- 
berland Plateau ;  whereas,  it  was  remunerative  on  the  wide 
fertile  plantations  of  the  coastal  lowland.  The  ethics  of  the 
question  were  obscured  where  conditions  of  soil  and  topog- 
raphy made  the  institution  profitable.  In  the  mountains,  as 
also  in  New  England,  a  law  of  diminishing  financial  returns 


24         GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 

had  for  its  corollary  a  law  of  increasing  moral  insight.  In  this 
case,  geographic  conditions  worked  through  the  medium  of 
direct  economic  effects  to  more  important  political  and  ethical 
results. 

The  roots  of  geographic  influence  often  run  far  under- 
ground before  coming  to  the  surface,  to  sprout  into  some  flow- 
ering growth ;  and  to  trace  this  back  to  its  parent  stem  is  the 
necessary  but  not  easy  task  of  the  geographer. 

fime  The  complexity  of  this  problem  does  not  end  here.     The 

clement.  modification  of  human  development  by  environment  is  a  nat- 
ural process ;  like  all  other  natural  processes,  it  involves  the 
cumulative  effects  of  causes  operating  imperceptibly  but  per- 
sistently through  vast  periods  of  time.  Slowly  and  deliber- 
ately does  geography  engrave  the  sub-titles  to  a  people's  his- 
tory. Neglect  of  this  time  element  in  the  consideration  of 
geographic  influences  accounts  equally  for  many  an  exagger- 
ated assertion  and  denial  of  their  power.  A  critic  undertakes 
to  disprove  modification  through  physical  environment  by 
showing  that  it  has  not  produced  tangible  results  in  the  last 
fifty  or  five  hundred  years.  This  attitude  recalls  the  early  ge- 
ologists, whose  imaginations  could  not  conceive  the  vast  ages 
necessary  in  a  scientific  explanation  of  geologic  phenomena. 
The  theory  of  evolution  has  taught  us  in  science  to  think 
in  larger  terms  of  time,  so  that  we  no  longer  raise  the  ques- 
tion whether  European  colonists  in  Africa  can  turn  into  ne- 
groes, though  we  do  find  the  recent  amazing  statement  that 
the  Yankee,  in  his  tall,  gaunt  figure,  "the  colour  of  his  skin, 
and  the  formation  of  his  hair,  has  begun  to  differentiate  him- 
self from  his  European  kinsman  and  approach  the  type  of  the 
aboriginal  Indians."2  Evolution  tells  the  story  of  modifica- 
tion by  a  succession  of  infinitesimal  changes,  and  emphasizes 
the  permanence  of  a  modification  once  produced  long  after 
the  causes  for  it  cease  to  act.  The  mesas  of  Arizona.  th° 
earth  sculpture  of  the  Grand  Canyon  remain  as  monuments  to 
the  erosive  forces  which  produced  them.  So  a  habitat  li 
upon  man  no  ephemeral  impress ;  it  affects  him  in  one  way  at 
a  low  stage  of  his  development,  and  differently  at  a  later  or 
higher  stage,  because  the  man  himself  and  his  relation  to  his 
environment  have  been  modified  in  the  earlier  period;  but 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY         25 

traces  of  that  earlier  adaptation  survive  in  his  maturer  life. 
Hence  man's  relation  to  his  environment  must  be  looked  at 
through  the  perspective  of  historical  development.  It  would 
be  impossible  to  explain  the  history  and  national  character 
of  the  contemporary  English  solely  by  their  twentieth  century 
response  to  their  environment,  because  with  insular  conserva- 
tism they  carry  and  cherish  vestiges  of  times  when  their  islands 
represented  different  geographic  relations  from  those  of  to- 
day. Witness  the  wool-sack  of  the  lord  chancellor.  We  can- 
not understand  the  location  of  modern  Athens,  Rome  or  Berlin 
from  the  present  day  relations  of  urban  populations  to  their 
environment,  because  the  original  choice  of  these  sites  was  dic- 
tated by  far  different  considerations  from  those  ruling  to-day. 
In  the  history  of  these  cities  a  whole  succession  of  geographic 
factors  have  in  turn  been  active,  each  leaving  its  impress 
of  which  the  cities  become,  as  it  were,  repositories. 

The  importance  of  this  time  element  for  a  solution  of  an-  Effect  of 
thropo-geographic  problems  becomes  plainer,  where  a  certain  a  previous 
locality  has  received  an  entirely  new  population,  or  where  a 
given  people  by  migration  change  their  habitat.  The  result 
in  either  case  is  the  same,  a  new  combination,  new  modifications 
superimposed  on  old  modifications.  And  it  is  with  this  sort  of 
case  that  anthropo-geography  most  often  has  to  deal.  So 
restless  has  mankind  been,  that  the  testimony  of  history  and 
ethnology  is  all  against  the  assumption  that  a  social  group 
has  ever  been  subjected  to  but  one  type  of  environment  during 
its  long  period  of  development  from  a  primitive  to  a  civilized 
society.  Therefore,  if  we  assert  that  a  people  is  the  product 
of  the  country  which  it  inhabits  at  a  given  time,  we  forget 
that  many  different  countries  which  its  forbears  occupied  have 
left  their  mark  on  the  present  race  in  the  form  of  inherited 
aptitudes  and  traditional  customs  acquired  in  those  remote 
ancestral  habitats.  The  Moors  of  Granada  had  passed 
through  a  wide  range  of  ancestral  experiences ;  they  bore  the 
impress  of  Asia,  Africa  and  Europe,  and  on  their  expulsion 
from  Spain  carried  back  with  them  to  Morocco  traces  of  their 
peninsula  life. 

A  race  or  tribe  develops  certain  characteristics  in  a  certain 
region,  then  moves  on,  leaving  the  old  abode  but  not  all  the 


26         GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IX  HISTORY 

accretions  of  custom,  social  organization  and  economic  method 
there  acquired.  These  travel  on  with  the  migrant  people; 
some  are  dropped,  others  are  preserved  because  of  utility, 
sentiment  or  mere  habit.  For  centuries  after  the  settlement 
of  the  Jews  in  Palestine,  traces  of  their  pastoral  life  in  the 
grasslands  of  Mesopotamia  could  be  discc  rm-il  in  their  social 
and  political  organization,  in  their  ritual  and  literature.  Sur- 
vivals of  their  nomadic  life  in  Asiatic  steppes  still  persist 
among  the  Turks  of  Europe,  after  six  centuries  of  sedentary 
life  in  the  best  agricultural  land  of  the  Balkan  Peninsula.  One 
of  these  appears  in  their  choice  of  meat.  They  eat  chiefly 
sheep  and  goats,  beef  very  rarely,  and  swine  not  at  all.29 
The  first  two  thrive  on  poor  pastures  and  travel  well,  so  that 
they  are  admirably  adapted  to  nomadic  life  in  arid  lands;  the 
last  two,  far  less  so,  but  on  the  other  hand  are  the  regular  con- 
comitant of  agricultural  life.  The  Turk's  taste  to-day,  there- 
fore, is  determined  by  the  flocks  and  herds  which  he  once  pas- 
tured on  the  Trans-Caspian  plains.  The  finished  terrace 
agriculture  and  methods  of  irrigation,  which  the  Saracens 
had  learned  on  the  mountain  sides  of  Yemen  through  a  school- 
ing of  a  thousand  years  or  more,  facilitated  their  economic 
conquest  of  Spain.  Their  intelligent  exploitation  of  the  coun- 
try's resources  for  the  support  of  their  growing  numbers  in 
the  favorable  climatic  conditions  which  Spain  offered  was  a 
light-hearted  task,  because  of  the  severe  training  which  they 
had  had  in  their  Arabian  home. 

The  origin  of  Roman  political  institutions  is  intimately 
connected  with  conditions  of  the  naturally  small  territory 
where  arose  the  greatness  of  Rome.  But  now,  after  two  thou- 
sand years  we  see  the  political  impress  of  this  narrow  origin 
spreading  to  the  governments  of  an  area  of  Europe  immeasur- 
ably larger  than  the  region  that  gave  it  birth.  In  the  United 
States,  little  New  England  has  been  the  source  of  the  strong- 
est influences  modifying  the  political,  religious  and  cultural 
life  of  half  a  continent ;  and  as  far  as  Texas  and  California 
these  influences  bear  the  stamp  of  that  narrow,  unproductive 
environment  which  gave  to  its  sons  energy  of  character  and 

planted  ideals- 

religions.  Ideas  especially  are  light  baggage,  and  travel  with  migrant 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY         27 

peoples  over  many  a  long  and  rough  road.  They  are  wafted 
like  winged  seed  by  the  wind,  and  strike  root  in  regions  where 
they  could  never  have  originated.  Few  classes  of  ideas  bear  so 
plainly  the  geographic  stamp  of  their  origin  as  religious  ones, 
yet  none  have  spread  more  widely.  The  abstract  monotheism 
sprung  from  the  bare  grasslands  of  western  Asia  made  slow 
but  final  headway  against  the  exuberant  forest  gods  of  the 
early  Germans.  Religious  ideas  travel  far  from  their  seed- 
beds along  established  lines  of  communication.  We  have  the 
almost  amusing  episode  of  the  brawny  Burgundians  of  the 
fifth  century,  who  received  the  Arian  form  of  Christianity  by 
way  of  the  Danube  highway  from  the  schools  of  Athens  and 
Alexandria,  valiantly  supporting  the  niceties  of  Greek  reli- 
gious thought  against  the  Roman  version  of  the  faith  which 
came  up  the  Rhone  Valley. 

If  the  sacred  literature  of  Judaism  and  Christianity  take 
weak  hold  upon  the  western  mind,  this  is  largely  because  it  is 
written  in  the  symbolism  of  the  pastoral  nomad.  Its  figures 
of  speech  reflect  life  in  deserts  and  grasslands.  For  these 
figures  the  western  mind  has  few  or  vague  corresponding  ideas. 
It  loses,  therefore,  half  the  import,  for  instance,  of  the 
Twenty-third  Psalm,  that  picture  of  the  nomad  shepherd 
guiding  his  flock  across  parched  and  trackless  plains,  to  bring 
them  at  evening,  weary,  hungry,  thirsty,  to  the  fresh  pas- 
tures and  waving  palms  of  some  oasis,  whose  green  tints  stand 
out  in  vivid  contrast  to  the  tawny  wastes  of  the  encompassing 
sands.  "He  leadeth  me  beside  the  still  waters,"  not  the  noisy 
rushing  stream  of  the  rainy  lands,  but  the  quiet  desert 
pool  that  reflects  the  stars.  What  real  significance  has  the 
tropical  radiance  of  the  lotus  flower,  the  sacred  symbol  of  Bud- 
dhism, for  the  Mongolian  lama  in  the  cold  and  arid  borders  of 
Gobi  or  the  wind-swept  highlands  of  sterile  Tibet?  And  yet 
these  exotic  ideas  live  on,  even  if  they  no  longer  bloom  in  the 
uncongenial  soil.  But  to  explain  them  in  terms  of  their  pres- 
ent environment  would  be  indeed  impossible. 

A  people  may  present  at  any  given  time  only  a  partial  re-  Partial 
sponse  to  their  environment  also  for  other  reasons.    This  may  response 
be  either  because  their  arrival  has  been  too  recent  for  the  new  tc  environ- 
habitat  to  make  its  influence  felt ;  or  because,  even  after  long 


28         GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 

residence,  one  overpowering  geographic  factor  has  operated  to 
the  temporary  exclusion  of  all  others.  Under  these  circum- 
stances, suddenly  acquired  geographic  advantages  of  a  high 
order  or  such  advantages,  long  possessed  but  tardily  made 
available  by  the  release  of  national  powers  from  more  pressing 
tasks,  may  institute  a  new  trend  of  historical  development, 
resulting  more  from  stimulating  geographic  conditions  than 
from  the  natural  capacities  or  aptitudes  of  the  people  them- 
selves. Such  developments,  though  often  brilliant,  are  likely 
to  be  short-lived  and  to  end  suddenly  or  disastrously,  because 
not  sustained  by  a  deep-seated  national  impulse  animating  the 
whole  mass  of  the  people.  They  cease  when  the  first  enthusi- 
asm spends  itself,  or  when  outside  competition  is  intensified,  or 
the  material  rewards  decrease. 

The  case  An  illustration  is  found  in  the  mediaeval  history  of  Spain. 

Pam<  The  intercontinental  location  of  the  Iberian  Peninsula  ex- 
posed it  to  the  Saracen  conquest  and  to  the  constant  reinforce- 
ments to  Islam  power  furnished  by  the  Mohammedanized  Ber- 
bers of  North  Africa.  For  seven  centuries  this  location  was  the 
dominant  geographic  factor  in  Spain's  history.  It  made  the 
expulsion  of  the  Moors  the  sole  object  of  all  the  Iberian  states, 
converted  the  country  into  an  armed  camp,  made  the  gentle- 
man adventurer  and  Christian  knight  the  national  ideal.  It 
placed  the  center  of  political  control  high  up  on  the  barren 
plateau  of  Castile,  far  from  the  centers  of  population  and 
culture  in  the  river  lowlands  or  along  the  coast.  It  excluded 
the  industrial  and  commercial  development  which  was  giving 
bone  and  sinew  to  the  other  European  states.  The  release  of 
the  national  energies  by  the  fall  of  Granada  in  1492  and  the 
now  ingrained  spirit  of  adventure  enabled  Spain  and  Portugal 
to  utilize  the  unparalleled  advantage  of  their  geographical 
position  at  the  junction  of  the  Mediterranean  and  Atlantic 
highways,  and  by  their  great  maritime  explorations  in  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  to  become  foremost  among 
European  colonial  powers.  But  the  development  was  sporadic, 
not  supported  by  any  widespread  national  movement.  In 
a  few  decades  the  maritime  preeminence  of  the  Iberian 
Peninsula  began  to  yield  to  the  competition  of  the  Dufch 
and  English,  who  were,  so  to  speak,  saturated  with  their  own 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY          29 

maritime  environment.  Then  followed  the  rapid  decay  of 
the  sea  power  of  Spain,  followed  by  that  of  Portugal,  till 
by  1648  even  her  coasting  trade  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
Dutch,  and  Dutch  vessels  were  employed  to  maintain  com- 
munication with  the  West  Indies.30 

We  have  a  later  instance  of  sporadic  development  under  Sporadic 
the  stimulus  of  new  and  favorable  geographic  conditions,  with  response 
a  similar  anti-clirnax.  The  expansion  of  the  Russians  across  to  *  new 
the  lowlands  of  Siberia  was  quite  in  harmony  with  the  genius 
of  that  land-bred  people;  but  when  they  reached  Bering  Sea, 
the  enclosed  basin,  the  proximity  of  the  American  continent, 
the  island  stepping-stones  between,  and  the  lure  of  rich  seal- 
skins to  the  fur-hunting  Cossacks  determined  a  sudden  mari- 
time expansion,  for  which  the  Russian  people  were  unfitted. 
Beginning  in  1747,  it  swept  the  coast  of  Alaska,  located  its 
American  administrative  center  first  on  Kadiak,  then  on  Bara- 
nof  Island,  and  by  1812  placed  its  southern  outposts  on  the 
California  coast  near  San  Francisco  Bay  and  on  the  Farralone 
Islands.31  Russian  convicts  were  employed  to  man  the  crazy 
boats  built  of  green  lumber  on  the  shores  of  Bering  Sea,  and 
Aleutian  hunters  with  their  bidarkas  were  impressed  to  catch 
the  seal.32  The  movement  was  productive  only  of  countless 
shipwrecks,  many  seal  skins,  and  an  opportunity  to  satisfy 
an  old  grudge  against  England.  The  territory  gained  was 
sold  to  the  United  States  in  1867.  This  is  the  one  instance 
in  Russian  history  of  any  attempt  at  maritime  expansion,  and 
also  of  any  withdrawal  from  territory  to  which  the  Muscovite 
power  had  once  established  its  claim.  This  fact  alone  would 
indicate  that  only  excessively  tempting  geographic  condi- 
tions led  the  Russians  into  an  economic  and  political  venture 
which  neither  the  previously  developed  aptitudes  of  the  people 
nor  the  conditions  of  population  and  historical  development 
on  the  Siberian  seaboard  were  able  to  sustain. 

The  history  and  culture  of  a  people  embody  the  effects  of  The 
previous   habitats   and   of  their  final  environment;   but  this  larger  con- 
environment   means    something    more    than    local    geographic C£ 
conditions.     It  involves  influences  emanating  from  far  beyond  ment 
the  borders.     No  country,  no  continent,  no  sea,  mountain  or 
river  is  restricted  to  itself  in  the  influence  which  it  either  exer- 


30         GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 

cises  or  receives.  The  history  of  Austria  cannot  be  understood 
merely  from  Austrian  ground.  Austrian  territory  is  part  of 
the  Mediterranean  hinterland,  and  therefore  has  been  linked 
historically  with  Rome,  Italy,  and  the  Adriatic.  It  is  a  part 
of  the  upper  Danube  Valley  and  therefore  shares  much  of  its 
history  with  Bavaria  and  Germany,  while  the  lower  Danube 
has  linked  it  with  the  Black  Sea,  Greece,  the  Russian  steppes, 
and  Asia.  The  Asiatic  Hungarians  have  pushed  forward  their 
ethnic  boundary  nearly  to  Vienna.  The  Austrian  capital  has 
seen  the  warring  Turks  beneath  its  walls,  and  shapes  its  for- 
eign policy  with  a  view  to  the  relative  strength  of  the  Sultan 
and  the  Czar. 

Unity  of  The  earth  is  an  inseparable  whole.     Each  country  or  sea 

the  earth.  js  physically  and  historically  intelligible  only  as  a  portion  of 
that  whole.  Currents  and  wind-systems  of  the  oceans  modify 
the  climate  of  the  nearby  continents,  and  direct  the  first  daring 
navigations  of  their  peoples.  The  alternating  monsoons  of 
the  Indian  Ocean  guided  Arab  merchantmen  from  ancient 
times  back  and  forth  between  the  Red  Sea  and  the  Malabar 
coast  of  India.83  The  Equatorial  Current  and  the  northeast 
trade-wind  carried  the  timid  ships  of  Columbus  across  the 
Atlantic  to  America.  The  Gulf  Stream  and  the  prevailing 
westerlies  later  gave  English  vessels  the  advantage  on  the  re- 
turn voyage.  Europe  is  a  part  of  the  Atlantic  coast.  This  is 
a  fact  so  significant  that  the  North  Atlantic  has  become  a 
European  sea.  The  United  States  also  is  a  part  of  the  Atlan- 
tic coast :  this  is  the  dominant  fact  of  American  history.  China 
forms  a  section  of  the  Pacific  rim.  This  is  the  fact  back  of 
the  geographic  distribution  of  Chinese  emigration  to  Annam, 
Tonkin,  Siam,  Malacca,  the  Philippines,  East  Indies,  Borneo, 
Australia,  Hawaiian  Islands,  the  Pacific  Coast  States,  British 
Columbia,  the  Alaskan  coast  southward  from  Bristol  Bay  in 
Bering  Sea,  Ecuador  and  Peru. 

As  the  earth  is  one,  so  is  humanity.  Its  unity  of  species 
points  to  some  degree  of  communication  through  a  long  pre- 
historic past.  Universal  history  is  not  entitled  to  the  name 
unless  it  embraces  all  parts  of  the  earth  and  all  peoples, 
whether  savage  or  civilized.  To  fill  the  gaps  in  the  written 
record  it  must  turn  to  ethnology  and  geography,  which  by 


GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY         31 

tracing  the  distribution  and  movements  of  primitive  peoples 
can  often  reconstruct  the  most  important  features  of  their 
history. 

Anthropo-geographic  problems  are  never  simple.  They 
must  all  be  viewed  in  the  long  perspective  of  evolution  and  the 
historical  past.  They  require  allowance  for  the  dominance  of 
different  geographic  factors  at  different  periods,  and  for  a 
possible  range  of  geographic  influences  wide  as  the  earth  itself. 
In  the  investigator  they  call  for  pains-taking  analysis  and, 
above  all,  an  open  mind. 

-3 
NOTES   TO    CHAPTER   I 

1.  George  Adam  Smith,  Historical  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,  pp. 
149-157.     New  York,  1897. 

2.  A.  P.  Brigham,  Geographic  Influences  in  American  History,  Chap. 
I.  Boston,  1903. 

3.  E.  H.  Whitbeck,  Geographic  Influences  in  the  Development  of  New 
Jersey,  Journal  of  Geography,  Vol.   V,  No.   6.     January,   1908. 

4.  Hans  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  II,  p.  372.     London  and 
New  York,  1902-1906. 

5.  Jean  Baptiste  Tavernier,  Travels  in  India,  1641-1667.     Vol.  I,  chap. 
V  and  map.     London,  1889. 

6.  Sir  Thomas  Holdich,  India,  p.  305.     London,  1905. 

7.  Bunbury,  History  of  Ancient  Geography,  Vol.  II,  pp.  464-465,  469. 
London,  1883. 

8.  Imperial  Gazetteer  for  India,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  109.     London,  1885. 

9.  G.  G.  Chisholm,  The  Relativity  of  Geographic  Advantages,  Scottish 
Geog.  Mag.,  Vol.  XIII,  No.  9,  Sept.  1897. 

10.  Hugh  Eobert  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  347.     New  York, 
1902. 

11.  Joseph  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  pp.  228-230.     London,  1903. 

12.  H.  J.  Mackinder,  Britain  and  the  British  Seas,  pp.  317-323.     Lon- 
don, 1904. 

13.  Captain  A.  T.  Mahan,   Influence  of  Sea  Power  upon  History,  pp. 
36-38.     Boston,  1902. 

14.  G.  G.  Chisholm,  Economic  Geography,  Scottish  Geog.  Mag.,  March, 
1908. 

15.  Captain  A.  T.  Mahan,  Influence  of  Sea  Power  upon  History,  pp.  37- 
38.     Boston,   1902. 

16.  Boyd    Winchester,    The    Swiss    Republic,    pp.    123,    124,    145-147. 
Philadelphia,  1891. 

17.  Montesquieu,  Spirit  of  the  Laws,  Book  XIV,  chap.  IV. 

18.  Henry   Buckle,   History   of   Civilization   in   England,   Vol.    I,   pp. 
86-106. 


32         GEOGRAPHIC  FACTORS  IX  HISTORY 

19.  Heinrich  von  Treitschke,  Politik,  Vol.  I,  p.  225.     Leipzig,  1897. 
This  whole  chapter  on  Land  und  Leute  is  suggestive. 

20.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  524-525.     New  York,  1899. 

21.  Ibid.,  526. 

22.  Ibid.,  517-520,  533-536. 

23.  Joseph  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  pp.   256-257,  268-271.     London, 
1903. 

24.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  p.  89.     New  York,  1899. 

25.  Strabo,  Book  VII,  chap.  I,  2. 

26.  Strabo,  Book  II,  chap.  Ill,  7. 

27.  Plutarch,  Solon,  pp.  13,  29,  154. 

28.  Hans  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  II,  pp.  244-245.     New 
York,  1902-1906. 

29.  Roscher,  National-oekonomik  des  Ackerbaues,  p.  33,  note  3.     Stutt- 
gart, 1888. 

30.  Captain  A.  T.  Mahan,  Influence  of  Sea  Power  upon  History,  pp.  41- 
42,  50-53.     Boston,   1902. 

31.  H.  Bancroft,  History  of  California,  Vol.  I,  pp.  298,  628-635.     San 
Francisco. 

32.  Agnes  Laut,  Vikings  of  the  Pacific,  pp.  64-82.     New  York,  1905. 

33.  Bunbury,  History  of  Ancient  Geography,  Vol.  II,  pp.  351,  470- 
471.    London,  1883. 


'  K 


»v<^/ 

'"'  -^--l.'..^**-      **-"'        ~   ''?     ~^'^-      .->••' 

CHAPTER  II 

^ 

CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES 

INTO  almost  every  anthropo-geographical  problem  the  ele- 
ment of  environment  enters  in  different  phases,  with  different 
modes  of  operation  and  varying  degrees  of  importance.  Since 
the  causal  conception  of  geography  demands  a  detailed  anal- 
ysis of  all  the  relations  between  environment  and  human  devel- 
opment, it  is  advisable  to  distinguish  the  various  classes  of 
geographic  influences. 

Four  fundamental  classes  of  effects  can  be  distinguished.  Physical 

1  v_The  first  class  includes  direct  physical  effects  of  environ-  effects- 
ment,  similar  to  those  exerted  on  plants  and  animals  by  their 
habitat.  Certain  geographic  conditions,  more  conspicuously 
those  of  climate,  apply  certain  stimuli  to  which  man,  like 
the  lower  animals,  responds  by  an  adaption  of  his  organ- 
ism to  his  environment.  Many  physiological  peculiarities  of 
man  are  due  to  physical  effects  of  environment,  which  doubt- 
less operated  very  strongly  in  the  earliest  stages  of  human 
development,  and  in  those  shadowy  ages  contributed  to  the 
differentiation  of  races.  The  unity  of  the  human  species  is  as 
clearly  established  as  the  diversity  of  races  and  peoples,  whose 
divergences  must  be  interpreted  chiefly  as  modifications  in 
response  to  various  habitats  in  long  periods  of  time.  /- 

Such  modifications  have  probably  been  numerous  in  the  Variation 
persistent  and  unending  movements,  shif tings,  and  migrations  and  natural 
which  have  made  up  the  long  prehistoric  history  of  man.   If  the 
origin  of  species  is  found  in  variability  and  inheritance,  vari- 
ation is  undoubtedly  influenced  by  a  change  of  natural  condi- 
tions.    To  quote  Darwin,  "In  one  sense  the  conditions  of  life 
may  be  said,  not  only  to  cause  variability,  either  directly  or 
indirectly,  but  likewise  to  include  natural  selection,  for  the 
conditions  determine  whether  this  or  that  variety  shall  sur- 
vive."1    The  variability  of  man  does  not  mean  that  every  ex- 


34      CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES 

ternal  influence  leaves  its  mark  upon  him,  but  that  man  as  an 
organism,  by  the  preservation  of  beneficent  variations  and  the 
elimination  of  deleterious  ones,  is  gradually  adapted  to  his 
environment,  so  that  he  can  utilize  most  completely  that  which 
it  contributes  to  his  needs.  This  self-maintenance  under  out- 
ward influences  is  an  essential  part  of  the  conception  of  life 
which  Herbert  Spencer  defines  as  the  correspondence  between 
internal  conditions  and  external  circumstances,  or  August 
Comte  as  the  harmony  between  the  living  being  and  the  sur- 
rounding medium  or  milieu. 

According  to  Virchow,  the  distinction  of  races  rests  upon 
hereditary  variations,  but  heredity  itself  cannot  become  active 
till  the  characteristic  or  Zustand  is  produced  which  is  to  be 
handed  down.2  But  environment  determines  what  variation 
shall  become  stable  enough  to  be  passed  on  by  heredity.  For 
instance,  we  can  hardly  err  in  attributing  the  great  lung 
capacity,  massive  chests,  and  abnormally  large  torsos  of  the 
Quichua  and  Aymara  Indians  inhabiting  the  high  Andean 
plateaus  to  the  Tariffed  air  found  at  an  altitude  of  10,000  or 
15,000  feet  above  sea  level.  Whether  these  have  been 
acquired  by  centuries  of  extreme  lung  expansion,  or  represent 
the  survival  of  a  chance  variation  of  undoubted  advantage, 
they  are  a  product  of  the  environment.  They  are  a  serious 
handicap  when  the  Aymara  Indian  descends  to  the  plains, 
where  he  either  dies  off  or  leaves  descendants  with  diminishing 
chests.3  [See  map  page  101.] 

Stature  Darwin   holds   that  many   slight   changes   in   animals  and 

and  en-          plants,  such  as  size,  color,  thickness  of  skin  and  hair,  have  been 
•onmen  .      produced  through  food  supply  and  climate  from  the  external 
conditions  under  which  the  forms  lived.4     Paul  Ehrenreich, 
while  regarding  the  chief  race  distinctions  as  permanent  forms, 
not  to  be  explained  by  external  conditions,  nevertheless  con- 
cedes the   slight   and   slow   variation  of   the   sub-race   under 
.  changing  conditions  of  food  and  climate  as  beyond  doubt.5 
I  Stature  is  partly  a  matter  of  feeding  and  hence  of  geographic 
i  condition.     In  mountain  regions,  where  the  food  resources  are 
'  scant,  the  varieties  of  wild  animals  are  characterized  by  smaller 
size  in  general  than  are  corresponding  species  in  the  lowlands. 
It  is  a  noticeable  fact  that  dwarfed  horses  or  ponies  have  origi- 


CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES   35 

nated  in  islands,  in  Iceland,  the  Shetlands,  Corsica  and  Sar- 
dinia. This  is  due  either  to  scanty  and  unvaried  food  or  to 
excessive  inbreeding,  or  probably  to  both.  The  horses  intro- 
duced into  the  Falkland  Islands  in  1764  have  deteriorated  so 
in  size  and  strength  in  a  few  generations  that  they  are  in  a  fair 
way  to  develop  a  Falkland  variety  of  pony.6  On  the  other 
hand,  Mr.  Homer  Davenport  states  that  the  pure-bred  Ara- 
bian horses  raised  on  his  New  Jersey  stock  farm  are  in  the 
third  generation  a  hand  higher  than  their  grandsires  imported 
from  Arabia,  and  of  more  angular  build.  The  result  is  due 
to  more  abundant  and  nutritious  food  and  the  elimination  of 
long  desert  journeys. 

The  low  stature  of  the  natives  prevailing  in  certain  "misery 
spots"  of  Europe,  as  in  the  A_uvergne  Plateau  of  southern 
France,  is  due  in  part  to  race,  in  part  to  a  disastrous  artificial 
selection  by  the  emigration  of  the  taller  and  more  robust  in- 
dividuals, but  in  considerable  part  to  the  harsh  climate  and 
starvation  food-yield  of  that  sterile  soil ;  for  the  children  of  the 
region,  if  removed  to  the  more  fertile  valleys  of  the  Loire  and 
Garonne,  grow  to  average  stature.7  The  effect  of  a  scant  and 
uncertain  food  supply  is  especially  clear  in  savages,  who  have 
erected  fewer  buffers  between  themselves  and  the  pressure  of 
environment.  The  Bushmen  of  the  Kalahari  Desert  are 
shorter  than  their  Hottentot  kindred  who  pasture  their  flocks 
and  herds  in  the  neighboring  grasslands.8  Samoyedes,  Lapps, 
and  other  hyperborean  races  of  Eurasia  are  shorter  than  their 
more  southern  neighbors,  the  physical  record  of  an  immemorial 
struggle  against  cold  and  hunger.  The  stunted  forms  and 
wretched  aspect  of  the  Snake  Indians  inhabiting  the  Rocky 
Mountain  deserts  distinguished  these  clans  from  the  tall  buf- 
falo-hunting tribes  of  the  plains.9  Any  feature  of  geographic 
environment  tending  to  affect  directly  the  physical  vigor  and 
strength  of  a  people  cannot  fail  to  prove  a  potent  factor  in 
their  history. 

Oftentimes  environment  modifies  the  physique  of  a  people  Physical 
indirectly  by  imposing  upon  them  certain  predominant  activi- 
ties,  which  may  develop  one  part  of  the  body  almost  to  the 
point  of  deformity.     This  is  the  effect  of  increased  use  or  dis- 
use which  Darwin  discusses.     He  attributes  the  thin  leffs  and 

o 


thick  arms  of  the  Payaguas  Indians  living  along  the  Paraguay 
River  to  generations  of  lives  spent  in  canoes,  with  the  lower 
extremities  motionless  and  the  arm  and  chest  muscles  in  con- 
stant exercise.10  Livingstone  found  these  same  characteristics 
of  broad  chests  and  shoulders  with  ill-developed  legs  among 
the  Barotse  of  the  upper  Zambesi;11  and  they  have  been  ob- 
served in  pronounced  form,  coupled  with  distinctly  impaired 
powers  of  locomotion,  among  the  Tlingit,  Tsimshean,  and 
Haida  Indians  of  the  southern  Alaskan  and  British  Columbia 
coast,  where  the  geographic  conditions  of  a  mountainous  and 
almost  strandless  shore  interdicted  agriculture  and  necessi- 
tated sea-faring  activities.12  An  identical  environment  has 
produced  a  like  physical  effect  upon  the  canoemen  of  Tierra 
del  Fuego13  and  the  Aleutian  Islanders,  who  often  sit  in  their 
boats  twenty  hours  at  a  time.14  These  special  adaptations 
are  temporary  in  their  nature  and  tend  to  disappear  with 
change  of  occupation,  as,  for  instance,  among  the  Tlingit  In- 
dians, who  develop  improved  leg  muscles  when  employed  as 
laborers  in  the  salmon  canneries  of  British  Columbia. 
Effects  of  Both  the  direct  and  indirect  physical  effects  of  environ- 

elimate.  ment  thus  far  instanced  are  obvious  in  themselves  and  easily 
explained.  Far  different  is  it  with  the  majority  of  physical 
effects,  especially  those  of  climate,  whose  mode  of  operation  is 
much  more  obscure  than  was  once  supposed.  The  modern 
geographer  does  not  indulge  in  the  naive  hypothesis  of  the 
last  century,  which  assumed  a  prompt  and  direct  effect  of 
environment  upon  the  form  and  features  of  man.  Carl  Ritter 
regarded  the  small,  slit  eyes  and  swollen  lids  of  the  Turkoman 
as  "an  obvious  effect  of  the  desert  upon  the  organism."  Stan- 
hope Smith  ascribed  the  high  shoulders  and  short  neck  of 
the  Tartars  of  Mongolia  to  their  habit  of  raising  their 
shoulders  to  protect  the  neck  against  the  cold;  their  small, 
squinting  eyes,  overhanging  brows,  broad  faces  and  high  cheek 
bones,  to  the  effect  of  the  bitter,  driving  winds  and  the  glare 
of  the  snow,  till,  he  says,  "every  feature  by  the  action  of  the 
cold  is  harsh  and  distorted."15  These  profound  influences  of 
a  severe  climate  upon  physiognomy  he  finds  also  among  the 
Lapps,  northern  Mongolians,  Samoyedes  and  Eskimo. 

Most  of  these  problems  are  only  secondarily  grist  for  the 


CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES      37 

geographer's  mill.  For  instance,  when  the  Aryans  descended 
to  the  enervating  lowlands  of  tropical  India,  and  in  that  de- 
bilitating climate  lost  the  qualities  which  first  gave  them  su- 
premacy, the  change  which  they  underwent  was  primarily  a 
physiological  one.  It  can  be  scientifically  described  and  ex- 
plained therefore  only  by  physiologists  and  physico-chemists ; 
and  upon  their  investigations  the  geographer  must  wait  before 
he  approaches  the  problem  from  the  standpoint  of  geographi- 
cal distribution.  Into  this  sub-class  of  physical  effects  come  Acclimat- 
all  questions  of  acclimatization.16  These  are  important  to  the  lzatlon- 
anthropo-geographer,  just  as  they  are  to  colonial  governments 
like  England  or  France,  because  they  affect  the  power  of  na- 
tional or  racial  expansion,  and  fix  the  historical  fate  of  tropical 
lands.  The  present  populations  of  the  earth  represent  physi- 
cal adaptation  to  their  environments.  The  intense  heat  and 
humidity  of  most  tropical  lands  prevent  any  permanent  occu- 
pation by  a  native-born  population  of  pure  whites.  The  ca- 
tarrhal  zone  north  of  the  fortieth  parallel  in  America  soon 
exterminates  the  negroes.17 

The  Indians  of  South  America,  though  all  fundamentally 
of  the  same  ethnic  stock,  are  variously  acclimated  to  the  warm, 
damp,  forested  plains  of  the  Amazon ;  to  the  hot,  dry,  treeless 
coasts  of  Peru ;  and  to  the  cold,  arid  heights  of  the  Andes. 
The  habitat  that  bred  them  tends  to  hold  them,  by  restricting 
the  range  of  climate  which  they  can  endure.  In  the  zone  of 
the  Andean  slope  lying  between  4,000  and  6,000  feet  of  alti- 
tude, which  produces  the  best  flavored  coffee  and  which  must 
be  cultivated,  the  imported  Indians  from  the  high  plateaus 
and  from  the  low  Amazon  plains  alike  sicken  and  di>v  after  a 
short  time ;  so  that  they  take  employment  on  these  coffee  plan- 
tations for  only  three  or  five  months,  and  then  return  to  their 
own  homes.  Labor  becomes  nomadic  on  these  slopes,  and  in 
the  intervals  these  farm  lands  of  intensive  agriculture  show  the 
anomaly  of  a  sparse  population  only  of  resident  managers.18 
Similarly  in  the  high,  dry  Himalayan  valley  of  the  upper 
Indus,  over  10,000  feet  above  sea  level,  the  natives  of  Ladak 
are  restricted  to  a  habitat  that  yields  them  little  margin 
of  food  for  natural  growth  of  population  but  forbids  them  to 
emigrate  in  search  of  more, — applies  at  the  same  time  the 


38      CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES 

lash  to  drive  and  the  leash  to  hold,  for  these  highbinders  soon 
die  when  they  reach  the  plains.19  Here  are  two  antagonistic 
geographic  influences  at  work  from  the  same  environment,  one 
physical  and  the  other  social-economic.  The  Ladaki  have 
reached  an  interesting  resolution  of  these  two  forces  by  the 
institution  of  polyandry,  which  keeps  population  practically 
stationary. 

Pigmen-  The  relation  of  pigmentation  to  climate  has  long  interested 

tation  geographers  as  a  question  of  environment;  but  their  specula- 

tions on  the  subject  have  been  barren,  because  the  preliminary 
investigations  of  the  physiologist,  physicist  and  chemist  are 
still  incomplete.  The  general  fact  of  increasing  nigrescence 
from  temperate  towards  equatorial  regions  is  conspicuous 
enough,  despite  some  irregularity  of  the  shading.20  This 
fact  points  strongly  to  some  direct  relation  between  climate 
and  pigmentation,  but  gives  no  hint  how  the  pigmental 
processes  are  affected.  The  physiologist  finds  that  in  the  case 
of  the  negro,  the  dark  skin  is  associated  with  a  dense  cuticle, 
diminished  perspiration,  smaller  chests  and  less  respirator v 
power,  a  lower  temperature  and  more  rapid  pulse,21  all  which 
variations  may  enter  into  the  problem  of  the  negro's  coloring. 
The  question  is  therefore  by  no  means  simple. 

Yet  it  is  generally  conceded  by  scientists  that  pigment  is  a 
protective  device  of  nature.  The  negro's  skin  is  comparatively 
insensitive  to  a  sun  heat  that  blisters  a  white  man.  Living- 
stone found  the  bodies  of  albino  negroes  in  Bechuana  Land 
always  blistered  on  exposure  to  the  sun,22  and  a  like  effect  has 
been  observed  among  albino  Polynesians,  and  Melanesians  of 
Fiji.23  Paul  Ehrenreich  finds  that  the  degree  of  coloration  de- 
pends less  upon  annual  temperature  than  upon  the  direct 
effect  of  the  sun's  rays ;  and  that  therefore  a  people  dwelling  in 
a  cool,  dry  climate,  but  exposed  to  the  sun  may  be  darker  than 
another  in  a  hot,  moist  climate  but  living  in  a  dense  forest. 
The  forest-dwelling  Botokudos  of  the  upper  San  Francisco 
River  in  Brazil  are  fairer  than  the  kindred  Kayapo  tribe,  who 
inhabit  the  open  campos ;  and  the  Arawak  of  the  Purus  River 
forests  are  lighter  than  their  fellows  in  the  central  Matto 
Grosso.24  Sea-faring  coast  folk,  who  are  constantly  exposed 
to  the  sun,  especially  in  the  Tropics,  show  a  deeper  pigmenta- 


CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES      39 

tion  than  their  kindred  of  the  wooded  interior.25  The  coast 
Moros  of  western  Mindanao  are  darker  than  the  Subanos,  their 
Malay  brethren  of  the  back  country,  the  lightness  of  whose 
color  can  be  explained  by  their  forest  life.26  So  the  Duallas 
of  the  Kamerun  coast  of  Africa  are  darker  than  the  Bakwiri 
inhabiting  the  forested  mountains  just  behind  them,  though 
both  tribes  belong  to  the  Bantu  group  of  people.27  Here 
light,  in  contradistinction  to  heat,  appears  the  dominant  factor 
in  pigmentation.  A  recent  theory,  advanced  by  von  Schmae- 
del  in  1895,  rests  upon  the  chemical  power  of  light.  It  holds 
that  the  black  pigment  renders  the  negro  skin  insensitive  to 
the  luminous  or  actinic  effects  of  solar  radiation,  which  are 
far  more  destructive  to  living  protoplasm  than  the  merely 
calorific  effects.28 

Coloration  responds  to  other  more  obscure  influences  of  en-  Pigmenta- 
vironment.  A  close  connection  between  pigmentation  and  ele-  ^on  an<* 
vation  above  sea  level  has  been  established :  a  high  altitude  a  l  u  e* 
operates  like  a  high  latitude.  Blondness  increases  appreciably 
on  the  higher  slopes  of  the  Black  Forest,  Vosges  Mountains, 
and  Swiss  Alps,  though  these  isolated  highlands  are  the 
stronghold  of  the  brunette  Alpine  race.29  Livi,  in  his  treatise 
on  military  anthropometry,  deduced  a  special  action  of  moun- 
tains upon  pigmentation  on  observing  a  prevailing  increase  of 
blondness  in  Italy  above  the  four-hundred  meter  line,  a 
phenomenon  which  came  out  as  strongly  in  Basilicata  and 
Calabria  provinces  of  the  south  as  in  Piedmont  and  Lombardy 
in  the  north.30  The  dark  Hamitic  Berbers  of  northern  Africa 
have  developed  an  unmistakable  blond  variant  in  high  valleys 
of  the  Atlas  range,  which  in  a  sub-tropical  region  rises  to  the 
height  of  12,000  feet.  Here  among  the  Kabyles  the  popula- 
tion is  fair;  grey,  blue  or  green  eyes  are  frequent,  as  is  also 
reddish  blond  or  chestnut  hair.31  Waitz  long  ago  affirmed 
this  tendency  of  mountaineers  to  lighter  coloring  from  his 
study  of  primitive  peoples.32  The  modification  can  not  be 
attributed  wholly  to  climatic  contrast  between  mountain  and 
plain.  Some  other  factor,  like  the  economic  poverty  of  the 
environment  and  the  poor  food-supply,  as  Livi  suggests,  has 
had  a  hand  in  the  result ;  but  just  what  it  is  or  how  it  has 
operated  cannot  yet  be  defined.33 


40   CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES 


Difficulty 
of 

general- 
ization. 


Psychical 
effects. 


Enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  the  geographer  can 
formulate  no  broad  generalization  as  to  the  relation  of  pig- 
mentation and  climate  from  the  occurrence  of  the  darkest 
skins  in  the  Tropics ;  because  this  fact  is  weakened  by  the  ap- 
pearance also  of  lighter  tints  in  the  hottest  districts,  and  of 
darker  ones  in  arctic  and  temperate  regions.  The  geographer 
must  investigate  the  questions  when  and  where  deeper  shades 
develop  in  the  skins  of  fair  races ;  what  is  the  significance  of 
dark  skins  in  the  cold  zones  nnd  of  fair  ones  in  hot  zones.  His 
answer  must  be  based  largely  on  the  conclusions  of  physiolo- 
gists and  physicists,  and  only  when  these  have  reached  a 
satisfactory  solution  of  each  detail  of  the  problem  can  the 
geographer  summarize  the  influence  of  environment  upon  pig- 
mentation. The  rule  can  therefore  safely  be  laid  down  that  in 
all  investigation  of  geographic  influences  upon  the  permanent 
physical  characteristics  of  races,  the  geographic  distribution 
of  these  should  be  left  out  of  consideration  till  the  last,  since 
it  so  easily  misleads.3*  Moreover,  owing  to  the  ceaseless  move- 
ments of  mankind,  these  effects  do  not  remain  confined  to  the 
region  that  produced  them,  but  pass  on  with  the  wandering 
throng  in  whom  they  have  once  developed,  and  in  whom  they 
endure  or  vanish  according  as  they  prove  beneficial  or  deleteri- 
ous in  the  new  habitat. 

II.  More  varied  and  important  are  the  psychical  effects  of 
geographic  environment.  As  direct  effects  they  are  doubtless 
bound  up  in  many  physiological  modifications;  and  as  influ- 
ences of  climate,  they  help  differentiate  peoples  and  races  in 
point  of  temperament.  They  are  reflected  in  man's  religion 
and  his  literature,  in  his  modes  of  thought  and  figures  of 
speech.  Blackstone  states  that  "in  the  Isle  of  Man,  to  take 
away  a  horse  or  ox  was  no  felony,  but  a  trespass,  because  of 
the  difficulty  in  that  little  territory  to  conceal  them  or  to  carry 
them  off;  but  to  steal  a  pig  or  a  fowl,  which  is  easily  done,  was 
a  capital  misdemeanour,  and  the  offender  punished  with 
death."  The  judges  or  deemsters  in  this  island  of  fishermen 
swore  to  execute  the  laws  as  impartially  "as  the  herring's  back- 
bone doth  lie  in  the  middle  of  the  fish."3  The  whole  mythol- 
ogy of  the  Polynesians  is  an  echo  of  the  encompassing  ocean. 
The  cosmography  of  every  primitive  people,  their  first  crude 


CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES   41 

effort  in  the  science  of  the  universe,  bears  the  impress  of  their 
habitat.  The  Eskimo's  hell  is  a  place  of  darkness,  storm  and 
intense  cold;36  the  Jew's  is  a  place  of  eternal  fire.  Buddha, 
born  in  the  steaming  Himalayan  piedmont,  fighting  the  lassi- 
tude induced  by  heat  and  humidity,  pictured  his  heaven  as 
Nirvana,  the  cessation  of  all  activity  and  individual  life. 

Intellectual  effects  of  environment  may  appear  in  the  en-  Indirect 
richment  of  a  Language  in  one  direction  to  a  rare  nicety  of  e^ect  upon 
expression ;  but  this  may  be  combined  with  a  meager  vocabu- 
lary in  all  other  directions.  The  greatest  cattle-breeders  among 
the  native  Africans,  such  as  the  Hereros  of  western  Damara- 
land  and  the  Dinkas  of  the  upper  White  Nile,  have  an  amazing 
choice  of  words  for  all  colors  describing  their  animals — brown, 
dun,  red,  white,  dapple,  and  so  on  in  every  gradation  of  shade 
and  hue.  The  Samoyedes  of  northern  Russia  have  eleven  or 
twelve  terms  to  designate  the  various  grays  and  browns  of 
their  reindeer,  despite  their  otherwise  low  cultural  develop- 
ment.37 The  speech  of  nomads  has  an  abundance  of  expres- 
sions for  cattle  in  every  relation  of  life.  It  includes  different 
words  for  breeding,  pregnancy,  death,  and  slaughtering  in 
relation  to  every  different  kind  of  domestic  animal.  The  Mag- 
yars, among  whom  pastoral  life  still  survives  on  the  low  plains 
of  the  Danube  and  Theiss,  have  a  generic  word  for  herd, 
csorda,  and  special  terms  for  herds  of  cattle,  horses,  sheep, 
and  swine.38  While  the  vocabulary  of  Malays  and  Poly- 
nesians is  especially  rich  in  nautical  terms,  the  Kirghis  shep- 
herd tribes  who  wander  over  the  highlands  of  western  Asia 
from  the  Tian  Shan  to  the  Hindu  Kush  have  four  different 
terms  for  four  kinds  of  mountain  passes.  A  daban  is  a  diffi- 
cult, rocky  defile;  an  art  is  very  high  and  dangerous;  a  bel  is 
a  low,  easy  pass,  and  a  Jcutal  is  a  broad  opening  between 
low  hills.39 

To  such  influences  man  is  a  passive  subject,  especially 
in  the  earlier  stages  of  his  development ;  but  there  are 
more  important  influences  emanating  from  his  environment 
which  affect  him  as  an  active  agent,  challenge  his  will  by  fur- 
nishing the  motives  for  its  exercise,  give  purpose  to  his  activi- 
ties, and  determine  the  direction  which  they  shall  take.40 
These  mold  his  mind  and  character  through  the  media  of  his 


42      CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES 

economic  and  social  life,  and  produce  effects  none  the  less 
important  because  they  are  secondary.  About  these  anthropo- 
geography  can  reach  surer  conclusions  than  regarding  direct 
psychical  effects,  because  it  can  trace  their  mode  of  operation 
as  well  as  define  the  result.  Direct  psychical  effects  are  more 
matters  of  conjecture,  whose  causation  is  asserted  rather  than 
proved.  They  seem  to  float  in  the  air,  detached  from  the  solid 
ground  under  foot,  and  are  therefore  subject  matter  for  tin 
psychologist  rather  than  the  geographer. 

The  great  What  of  the  great  man  in  this  geographical  interpretation 

man  in  of  history  ?  It  seems  to  take  no  account  of  him,  or  to  put  him 
history.  -n^o  ^  melting-pot  with  the  masses.  Both  are  to  some  extent 
true.  As  a  science,  anthropo-geography  can  deal  only  with 
large  averages,  and  these  exclude  or  minimize  the  exceptional 
individual.  Moreover,  geographic  conditions  which  give  this 
or  that  bent  to  a  nation's  purposes  and  determine  its  aggre- 
gate activities  have  a  similar  effect  upon  the  individual ;  but 
he  may  institute  a  far-seeing  policy,  to  whose  wisdom  only 
gradually  is  the  people  awakened.  The  acts  of  the  great  man 
are  rarely  arbitrary  or  artificial;  he  accelerates  or  retard 
the  normal  course  of  development,  but  cannot  turn  it  counter 
to  the  channels  of  natural  conditions.  As  a  rule  he  is  a 
product  of  the  same  forces  that  made  his  people.  He  moves 
with  them  and  is  followed  by  them  under  a  common  impulse. 
Daniel  Boone,  that  picturesque  figure  leading  the  van  of  the 
westward  movement  over  the  Allegheny  Mountains,  was  born 
of  his  frontier  environment  and  found  a  multitude  of  his  kind 
in  that  region  of  backwoods  farms  to  follow  him  into  the  wil- 
derness. Thomas  Jefferson  of  Virginia,  in  the  Louisiana  Pur- 
chase, carried  out  the  policy  of  expansion  adumbrated  in  Gov- 
ernor Spottswood's  expedition  with  the  Knights  of  the  Golden 
Horseshoe  over  the  Blue  Ridge  in  1712.  Jefferson's  daring 
consummation  of  the  purchase  without  government  authority 
showed  his  community  of  purpose  with  the  majority  of  the 
people.  Peter  the  Great's  location  of  his  capital  at  St.  Peters- 
burg, usually  stigmatized  as  the  act  of  a  despot,  was  made  in 
response  to  natural  conditions  offering  access  to  the  Baltic 
nations,  just  as  certainly  as  ten  centuries  before  similar  con- 
ditions and  identical  advantages  led  the  early  Russian  mer- 


CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES   43 

chants  to  build  up  a  town  at  nearby  Novgorod,  in  easy  water 

}  connection  with  the  Baltic  commerce.41 

^.JLUr-Geographic  conditions  influence  the  economic  and  so-  Economic 
cial  development  of  a  people  by  the  abundance,  paucity,  or  a"d  8 
general  character  of  the  natural  resources,  by  the  local  ease 
or  difficulty  of  securing  the  necessaries  of  life,  and  by  the 
possibility  of  industry  and  commerce  afforded  by  the  en- 
vironment. From  the  standpoint  of  production  and  exchange, 
these  influences  are  primarily  the  subject  matter  of  economic 
and  commercial  geography ;  but  since  they  also  permeate 
national  life,  determine  or  modify  its  social  structure,  con- 
demn it  to  the  dwarfing  effects  of  national  poverty,  or  open 
to  it  the  cultural  and  political  possibilities  resident  in  national 
wealth,  they  are  legitimate  material  also  for  anthropo-geog- 
raphy. 

They  are  especially  significant  because  they  determine  the  Size  of 
size  of  the  social  group.  This  must  be  forever  small  in  areas 
of  limited  resources  or  of  limited  extent,  as  in  the  little  islands 
of  the  world  and  the  yet  smaller  oases.  The  desert  of  Chinese 
Turkestan  supports,  in  certain  detached  spots  of  river-born 
fertility,  populations  like  the  60,000  of  Kashgar,  and  from 
this  size  groups  all  the  way  down  to  the  single  families  which 
Younghusband  found  living  by  a  mere  trickle  of  a  stream 
flowing  down  the  southern  slope  of  the  Tian  Shan.  Small 
islands,  according  to  their  size,  fertility,  and  command  of 
trade,  may  harbor  a  sparse  and  scant  population,  like  the  five 
hundred  souls  struggling  for  an  ill-fed  existence  on  the  barren 
Westman  Isles  of  Iceland ;  or  a  compact,  teeming,  yet  abso- 
lutely small  social  group,  like  that  crowding  Malta  or  the 
Bermudas.  Whether  sparsely  or  compactly  distributed,  such 
groups  suffer  the  limitations  inherent  in  their  small  size. 
They  are  forever  excluded  from  the  historical  significance  at- 
taching to  the  large,  continuously  distributed  populations  of 
fertile  continental  lands. 

f\     IV^jrjhe  next  class  belongs  exclusively  to  the  domain  of  Effect  upon 
geography,  because  it  embraces  the  influence  of  the  features  movements 
of  the  earth's  surface  in  directing  the  movements  and  ultimate  °   *>eo*>  w 
distribution   of  mankind.      It  includes  the  effect  of  natural 
barriers,  like  mountains,   deserts,  swamps,  and  seas,  in  ob- 


44   CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES 

structing  or  deflecting  the  course  of  migrating  people  and 
in  giving  direction  to  national  expansion;  it  considers  the 
tendency  of  river  valleys  and  treeless  plains  to  facilitate  such 
movements,  the  power  of  rivers,  lakes,  bays  and  oceans  either 
to  block  the  path  or  open  a  highway,  according  as  navigation 
is  in  a  primitive  or  advanced  stage;  and  finally  the  influence 
of  all  these  natural  features  in  determining  the  territory  which 
a  people  is  likely  to  occupy,  and  the  boundaries  which  shall 
separate  from  their  neighbors. 

River  The  lines  of  expansion  followed  by  the  French  and  English 

routes.  jn  j.jje  settlement  of  America  and  also  the  extent  of  territory 

covered  by  each  were  powerfully  influenced  by  geographic  con- 
ditions. The  early  French  explorers  entered  the  great  east- 
west  waterway  of  the  St.  Lawrence  River  and  the  Great 
Lakes,  whioh  carried  them  around  the  northern  end  of  the 
Appalachian  barrier  into  the  heart  of  the  continent,  planted 
them  on  the  low,  swampy,  often  navigable  watershed  of  the 
Mississippi,  and  started  them  on  another  river  voyage  of 
nearly  two  thousand  miles  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  Here 
were  the  conditions  and  temptation  for  almost  unlimited 
expansion ;  hence  French  Canada  reached  to  the  head  of  Lake 
Superior,  and  French  Louisiana  to  the  sources  of  the  Mis- 
souri. To  the  lot  of  the  English  fell  a  series  of  short  rivers 
with  fertile  valleys,  nearly  barred  at  their  not  distant  sources 
by  a  wall  of  forested  mountains,  but  separated  from  one 
another  by  low  watersheds  which  facilitated  lateral  expansjon 
over  a  narrow  belt  between  mountains  and  sea.  Here  a  region 
of  mild  climate  and  fertile  soil  suited  to  agriculture,  enclosed 
by  strong  natural  boundaries,  made  for  compact  settlement, 
in  contrast  to  the  wide  diffusion  of  the  French.  Later, 
when  a  growing  population  pressed  against  the  western 
barrier,  mountain  gates  opened  at  Cumberland  Gap  and 
the  Mohawk  Valley;  the  Ohio  River  and  the  Great  Lakes 
became  interior  thoroughfares,  and  the  northwestern  prairies 
lines  of  least  resistance  to  the  western  settler.  Rivers 
played  the  same  part  in  directing  and  expediting  this  forward 
movement,  as  did  the  Lena  and  the  Amoor  in  the  Russian  ad- 
vance into  Siberia,  the  Humber  and  the  Trent  in  the  progress 
of  the  Angles  into  the  heart  of  Britain,  the  Rhone  and 


Danube  in  the  march  of  the  Romans  into  central  Europe. 

The  geographical  environment  of  a  people  may  be  such  as  Segrega- 
te segregate  them  from  others,  and  thereby  to  preserve  or  ti°n  an(* 
even  intensify  their  natural  characteristics ;  or  it  may  expose  acces8lblllty 
them  to  extraneous  influences,  to  an  infusion  of  new  blood  and 
new  ideas,  till  their  peculiarities  are  toned  down,  their  distinct- 
ive features  of  dialect  or  national  dress  or  provincial  customs 
eliminated,  and  the  people  as  a  whole  approach  to  the  com- 
posite type  of  civilized  humanity.  A  land  shut  off  by  moun- 
tains or  sea  from  the  rest  of  the  world  tends  to  develop  a 
homogeneous  people,  since  it  limits  or  prevents  the  intrusion 
of  foreign  elements ;  or  when  once  these  are  introduced,  it 
encourages  their  rapid  assimilation  by  the  strongly  interactive 
life  of  a  confined  locality.  Therefore  large  or  remote  islands 
are,  as  a  rule,  distinguished  by  the  unity  of  their  inhabitants 
in  point  of  civilization  and  race  characteristics.  Witness 
Great  Britain,  Ireland,  Japan,  Iceland,  as  also  Australia 
and  New  Zealand  at  the  time  of  their  discovery.  The  high- 
lands of  the  Southern  Appalachians,  which  form  the  "mount- 
ain backyards"  of  Kentucky,  Tennessee  and  North  Carolina, 
are  peopled  by  the  purest  English  stock  in  the  United  States, 
descendants  of  the  backwoodsmen  of  the  late  eighteenth 
century.  Difficulty  of  access  and  lack  of  arable  land  have 
combined  to  discourage  immigration.  In  consequence,  foreign 
elements,  including  the  elsewhere  ubiquitous  negro,  are  want- 
ing, except  along  the  few  railroads  which  in  recent  years 
have  penetrated  this  country.  Here  survive  an  eighteenth 
century  English,  Christmas  celebrated  on  Twelfth  Night,  the 
spinning  wheel,  and  a  belief  in  Joshua's  power  to  arrest  the 
course  of  the  sun.42 

An  easily  accessible  land  is  geographically  hospitable  to  all 
new-comers,  facilitates  the  mingling  of  peoples,  the  exchange 
of  commodities  and  ideas.  The  amalgamation  of  races  in  such 
regions  depends  upon  the  similarity  or  diversity  of  the  ethnic 
elements  and  the  duration  of  the  common  occupation.  The 
broad,  open  valley  of  the  Danube  from  the  Black  Sea  to 
Vienna  contains  a  bizarre  mixture  of  several  stocks — Turks, 
Bulgarians,  various  families  of  pure  Slavs,  Roumanians,  Hun- 
garians, and  Germans.  These  elements  are  too  diverse  and 


46   CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES 

their  occupation  of  the  valley  too  recent  for  amalgamation 
to  have  advanced  very  far  as  yet.  The  maritime  plain  and 
open  river  valleys  of  northern  France  show  a  com]:L'le  fusion 
of  the  native  Celts  with  the  Saxons,  Franks,  and  Normans 
who  have  successively  drifted  into  the  region,  just  as  the 
Teutonic  and  scanter  Slav  elements  have  blended  in  the 
Baltic  plains  from  the  Elbe  to  the  Vistula. 

Change  of  Here  are  four  different   classes   of  geographic   influences, 

habitat.  all  which  may  become  active  in  modifying  a  people  when  it 

changes  its  habitat.  Many  of  the  characteristics  acquired  in 
the  old  home  still  live  on,  or  at  best  yield  slowly  to  the  new 
environment.  This  is  especially  true  of  the  direct  physical 
and  psychical  effects.  But  a  country  may  work  a  prompt 
and  radical  change  in  the  social  organization  of  an  immigrant 
people  by  the  totally  new  conditions  of  economic  life  which 
it  presents.  These  may  be  either  greater  wealth  or  poverty 
of  natural  resources  than  the  race  has  previously  known,  new 
stimulants  or  deterrents  to  commerce  and  intercourse,  and  new 
conditions  of  climate  which  affect  the  efficiency  of  the  work- 
man and  the  general  character  of  production.  From  these 
a  whole  complex  mass  of  secondary  effects  may  follow. 
J>  The  Aryans  and  Mongols,  leaving  their  homes  in  the  cool 
barren  highlands  of  Central  Asia  where  nature  dispensed  her 
gifts  with  a  miserly  hand,  and  coming  down  to  the  hot,  low, 
fertile  plains  of  the  Indian  rivers,  underwent  several  funda- 
mental changes  in  the  process  of  adaptation  to  their  new  en- 
vironment. An  enervating  climate  did  its  work  in  slaking 
their  energies ;  but  more  radical  still  was  the  change  wrought 
by  the  contrast  of  poverty  and  abundance,  enforced  ascrtirism 
and  luxury,  presented  by  the  old  and  new  home.  The  rest- 
less, tireless  shepherds  became  a  sedentary,  agricultural  peo- 
ple; the  abstemious  nomads, — spare,  sinewy,  strangers  to  in- 
dulgence— became  a  race  of  rulers,  revelling  in  luxury,  lord- 
ing it  over  countless  subjects;  finally,  their  numbers  increased 
rapidly,  no  longer  kept  down  by  the  scant  subsistence  of  arid 
grasslands  and  scattered  oases. 

In  a  similar  way,  the  Arab  of  the  desert  became  transformed 
into  the  sedentary  lord  of  Spain.  In  the  luxuriance  of  field 
and  orchard  which  his  skilful  methods  of  irrigation  and  til- 


CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES      47 

lage  produced,  in  the  growing  predominance  of  the  intellectual 
over  the  nomadic  military  life,  of  the  complex  affairs  of  city 
and  mart  over  the  simple  tasks  of  herdsman  or  cultivator,  he 
lost  the  benefit  of  the  early  harsh  training  and  therewith 
his  hold  upon  his  Iberian  empire.  Biblical  history  gives  us  the 
picture  of  the  Sheik  Abraham,  accompanied  by  his  nephew 
Lot,  moving  up  from  the  rainless  plains  of  Mesopotamia  with 
his  flocks  and  herds  into  the  better  watered  Palestine.  There 
his  descendants  in  the  garden  land  of  Canaan  became  an  agri- 
cultural people ;  and  the  problem  of  Moses  and  the  Judges  was 
to  prevent  their  assimilation  in  religion  and  custom  to  the 
settled  Semitic  tribes  about  them,  and  to  make  them  preserve 
the  ideals  born  in  the  starry  solitudes  of  the  desert. 

The  change  from  the  nomadic  to  the  sedentary  life  repre-  Retro- 
sents  an  economic  advance.  Sometimes  removal  to  strongly  *p 
contrasted  geographic  conditions  necessitates  a  reversion  to  a  .  . . 
lower  economic  type  of  existence.  The  French  colonists  who 
came  to  Lower  Canada  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies found  themselves  located  in  a  region  of  intense  cold, 
where  arable  soil  was  inferior  in  quality  and  limited  in  amount, 
producing  no  staple  like  the  tobacco  of  Virginia  or  the  wheat  of 
Maryland  or  the  cotton  of  South  Carolina  or  the  sugar  of 
the  West  Indies,  by  which  a  young  colony  might  secure  a 
place  in  European  trade.  But  the  snow-wrapped  forests  of 
Canada  yielded  an  abundance  of  fur-bearing  animals,  the 
fineness  and  thickness  of  whose  pelts  were  born  of  this  frozen 
north.  Into  their  remotest  haunts  at  the  head  of  Lake  Supe- 
rior or  of  Hudson  Bay,  long  lines  of  rivers  and  lakes  opened 
level  water  roads  a  thousand  miles  or  more  from  the  crude 
little  colonial  capital  at  Quebec.  And  over  in  Europe  beaver 
hats  and  fur-trimmed  garments  were  all  the  style!  So  the 
plodding  farmer  from  Normandy  and  the  fisherman  from 
Poitou,  transferred  to  Canadian  soil,  were  irresistibly  drawn 
into  the  adventurous  life  of  the  trapper  and  fur-trader.  The 
fur  trade  became  the  accepted  basis  of  colonial  life;  the 
voyageur  and  courier  de  bois,  clad  in  skins,  paddling  up  ice- 
rimmed  streams  in  their  birch-bark  canoes,  fraternizing  with 
Indians  who  were  their  only  companions  in  that  bleak  interior, 
and  married  often  to  dusky  squaws,  became  assimilated  to  the 


48      CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES 

savage  life  about  them  and  reverted  to  the  lower  hunter  stage 
of  civilization.43 

The  Boeri  Another  pronounced  instance  of  rapid  retrogression  under 
of  South  new  unfavorable  geographic  conditions  is  afforded  by  the 
South  African  Boer.  The  transfer  from  the  busy  commercial 
cities  of  the  Rhine  mouths  to  the  far-away  periphery  of  the 
world's  trade,  from  the  intensive  agriculture  of  small  deltaic 
gardens  and  the  scientific  dairy  farming  of  the  moist  Nether- 
lands to  the  semi-arid  pastures  of  the  high,  treeless  veldt, 
where  they  were  barred  from  contact  with  the  vivifying  sea 
and  its  ship-borne  commerce,  has  changed  the  enterprising 
seventeenth  century  Hollander  into  the  conservative  pastoral 
Boer.  Dutch  cleanliness  has  necessarily  become  a  tradition 
to  a  people  who  can  scarcely  find  water  for  their  cattle.  The 
comfort  and  solid  bourgeois  elegance  of  the  Dutch  home  lost 
its  material  equipment  in  the  Great  Trek,  when  the  long 
wagon  journey  reduced  household  furniture  to  its  lowest 
terms.  House-wifely  habits  and  order  vanished  in  the  semi- 
nomadic  life  which  followed.44  The  gregarious  instinct,  bred 
by  the  closely-packed  population  of  little  Holland,  was  trans- 
formed to  a  love  of  solitude,  which  in  all  lands  character- 
izes the  people  of  a  remote  and  sparsely  inhabited  frontier.  It 
is  a  common  saying  that  the  Boer  cannot  bear  to  see  another 
man's  smoke  from  his  stoep,  just  as  the  early  Trans- Allegheny 
pioneer  was  always  on  the  move  westward,  because  he  could  not 
bear  to  hear  his  neighbor's  watch-dog  bark.  Even  the  Boer 
language  has  deteriorated  under  the  effects  of  isolation  and 
a  lower  status  of  civilization.  The  native  Taal  differs  widely 
from  the  polished  speech  of  Holland ;  it  preserves  some  fea- 
tures of  the  High  Dutch  of  two  centuries  ago,  but  has  lost 
inflexions  and  borrowed  words  for  new  phenomena  from 
the  English,  Kaffirs  and  Hottentots ;  can  express  no  ab- 
stract ideas,  only  the  concrete  ideas  of  a  dull,  work-a-day 
world.45 

The  new  habitat  may  eliminate  many  previously  acquired 
characteristics  and  hence  transform  a  people,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  Boers;  or  it  may  intensify  tribal  or  national  traits,  as 
in  the  seafaring  propensities  of  the  Angles  and  Saxons  when 
transferred  to  Britain,  and  of  the  seventeenth  century  Eng- 


CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES      49 

lish  when  transplanted  to  the  indented  coasts  of  New  England ; 
or  it  may  tolerate  mere  survival  or  the  slow  dissuetude  of 
qualities  which  escape  any  particular  pressure  in  the  new 
environment,  and  which  neither  benefit  nor  handicap  in  the 
modified  struggle  for  existence. 


NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  H 

1.  Darwin,  Origin  of  Species,  Chap.  V,  p.  166.     New  York,  1895. 

2.  R.    Virchow,   Bassenbildung    und   Erblichkeit,   Bastian    Festschrift, 
pp.  14,  43,  44.     Berlin,  1896. 

3.  Darwin,  Descent  of  Man,  pp.  34-35.     New  York,  1899. 

4.  Darwin,  Origin  of  Species,  Chap.  I,  pp.  8-9.     New  York,  1895. 

5.  P.    Ehrenreich,   Die    Urbewohner   Brasiliens,   p.    30.   Braunschweig, 
1897. 

6.  Ratzel,  Die  Erde  und  das  Leben,  Vol.  I,  pp.  364,  365.    Leipzig  and 
Vienna,  1901. 

7.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  79-86,  96,  100.    New  York,  1899. 

8.  T.  Waitz,  Anthropology,  pp.  57-58.     Edited  by  J.  F.  Collingwood. 
London,  1863. 

9.  Schoolcraft,  Indian  Tribes  of  the  United  States,  Vol.  I,  pp.  198-200, 
219.    Philadelphia,  1853. 

10.  Darwin,  Descent  of  Man,  p.  33.     New  York,  1899. 

11.  D.  Livingstone,  Missionary  Travels,  p.  266.     New  York,  1858. 

12.  Alaska,  Eleventh  Census  Report,  pp.  54,  56.     Washington,  1893, 
and   Albert   P.    Niblack,    The   Coast   Indians   of    Southern   Alaska   and 
Northern  British  Columbia,  p.   237.     Washington,   1888. 

13.  Fitz-Roy,  Voyage  of  the  Beagle,  Vol.  II,  pp.   130-132,  137,  138. 
London,  1839. 

14.  H.   Bancroft,   Native  Races,  Vol.   I,   pp.   88-89.     San  Francisco, 
1886. 

15.  S.  Stanhope  Smith,  Essay  on  the  Causes  of  the  Variety  of  Com- 
plexion and  Figure  in  the  Human  Species,  pp.  103-110.     New  Brunswick 
and  New  York,  1810. 

16.  For  full  discussion  see  A.  R.  Wallace 's  article  on  acclimatization  in 
Encyclopedia  Britanica,  and  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe.    Chap.  XXI. 
New  York,  1899. 

17.  D.  G.  Brinton,  Races  and  Peoples,  pp.  39-41.     Philadelphia,  1901. 

18.  Darwin,  Descent  of  Man,  pp.  34-35.     New  York,  1899. 

19.  E.  F.  Knight,  Where  Three  Empires  Meet,  pp.  137-138.     London, 
1897. 

20.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  58-71,  Map.    New  York,  1898. 

21.  Ibid.,  p.  566.    D.  G.  Brinton,  Races  and  Peoples,  pp.  29-30.    Phila- 
delphia, 1901. 

22.  D.  Livingstone,  Missionary  Travels,  p.  607.     New  York,  1858. 

23.  Williams  and  Calvert,  Fiji  and  the  Fijians,  p.   83.     New  York, 

1859. 

,  t 


50   CLASSES  OF  GEOGRAPHIC  INFLUENCES 

24.  P.  Ehrenreich,  Die  Urbeivohner  Brasilicns,  p.  32.     Braunschweig, 
1897. 

25.  T.  Waitz,  Anthropology,  pp.  46-49.     Edited  by  Collingwood,  Lon- 
don, 1863. 

26.  Philippine  Census,  Vol.  I,  p.  552.     Washington,  1903. 

27.  F.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  106.     London,  1908. 

28.  Major  Charles  E.  Woodruff,  The  Effect  of  Tropical  Light  on  the 
White  Man,  New  York,  1905,  is  a  suggestive  but  iiot  convincing  discus- 
sion of  the  theory. 

29.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  74-77.     New  York,  1899. 

30.  Quoted  in  G.  Sergi,  The  Mediterranean  Race,  p.  73.     London  and 
New  York,  1901. 

31.  Ibid.,  pp.  63-69,  74-75. 

32.  T.  Waitz,  Anthropology,  pp.  44-45.     Edited  by  J.  F.  Collingwood, 
London,  1863. 

33.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  p.  76.     New  York,  1899. 

34.  For  able  discussion,  see  Topinard,  Anthropology,  pp.  385-392.     Tr. 
from  French,  London,  1894. 

35.  J.  Johnson,  Jurisprudence  of  the  Isle  of  Man,  pp.  44,  71.     Edin- 
burgh, 1811. 

36.  Charles  F.   Hall,  Arctic  Researches  and  Life  among  the   Eskimo, 
p.    571.      New    York,    1866.      Franz    Boas,    The   Central    Eskimo,    Sixth 
Annual  Eeport  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  pp.  588-590.     Washington, 
1888. 

37.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  35.     London,  1896-1898. 

38.  Roscher,  National-OeJconomik  des  AcTcerbaues,  p.  34,  note  8.    Stutt- 
gart, 1888. 

39.  Elisee  Reclus,  The  Earth  and  Its  Inhabitants,  Asia,  Vol.  I,  p.  171. 
New  York,  1895. 

40.  Alfred    Hettner,   Die   Geographie   dcs   MenscJien,   pp.    409-410    in 
Geographische  Zeitschrift,  Vol.  XIII,  No.  8.    Leipzig,  1907. 

41.  S.  B.  Boulton,  The  Russian  Empire,  pp.  60-64.     London,  1882. 

42.  E.  C.  Semple,  The  Anglo-Saxons  of  the  Kentucky  Mountains,  The 
Geographical  Journal,  Vol.  XVII,  No.  6,  pp.  588-623.  London,  1901. 

43.  E.-C.  Semple,  American  History  and  its  Geographic  Conditions,  pp. 
25-31.     Boston,  1903.     The  Influence  of  Geographic  Environment  on  the 
Lower  St.  Lawrence,  Bull.  Amer.  Geog.  Society,  Vol.  XXXVI,  p.  449- 
466.     -New  York,  1904. 

44.  A.  R.  Colquhoun,  Africander  Land,  pp.  200-201.    New  York,  1906. 

45.  Ibid.,  pp.  140-145.     James  Bryce,  Impressions  of  South  Africa,  p. 
398.    New  York,  1897. 


CHAPTER  III 
SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  THE  LAND 

EVERY  clan,  tribe,  state  or  nation  includes  two  ideas,  a  People 
people  and  its  land,  the  first  unthinkable  without  the  other.  an<i 
History,  sociology,  ethnology  touch  only  the  inhabited  areas 
of  the  earth.  These  areas  gain  their  final  significance  because 
of  the  people  who  occupy  them;  their  local  conditions  of 
climate,  soil,  natural  resources,  physical  features  and  geo- 
graphic situation  are  important  primarily  as  factors  in 
the  development  of  actual  or  possible  inhabitants.  A  land  is 
fully  comprehended  only  when  studied  in  the  light  of  its 
influence  upon  its  people,  and  a  people  cannot  be  understood 
apart  from  the  field  of  its  activities.  More  than  this,  human 
activities  are  fully  intelligible  only  in  relation  to  the  various 
geographic  conditions  which  have  stimulated  them  in  different 
parts  of  the  world.  The  principles  of  the  evolution  of  navi- 
gation, of  agriculture,  of  trade,  as  also  the  theory  of  popula- 
tion, can  never  reach  their  correct  and  final  statement,  unless 
the  data  for  the  conclusions  are  drawn  from  every  part  of 
the  world,  and  each  fact  interpreted  in  the  light  of  the  local 
conditions  whence  it  sprang.  Therefore  anthropology,  soci- 
ology and  history  should  be  permeated  by  geography. 

In  history,  the  question  of  territory, — by  which  is  meant  Political 
mere  area  in  contrast  to  specific  geographic  conditions —  geography 
has  constantly  come  to  the  front,  because  a  state  obviously 
involved  land  and  boundaries,  and  assumed  as  its  chief  func- 
tion the  defence  and  extension  of  these.  Therefore  political 
geography  developed  early  as  an  offshoot  of  history.  Politi- 
cal science  has  often  formulated  its  principles  without  regard 
to  the  geographic  conditions  of  states,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  most  fruitful  political  policies  of  nations  have  almost  in- 
variably had  a  geographic  core.  Witness  the  colonial  policy 
of  Holland,  England,  France  and  Portugal,  the  free-trade 


52  SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND 


Political 
versus 
social 
geography. 


policy  of  England,  the  militantism  of  Germany,  the  whole 
complex  question  of  European  balance  of  power  and  the 
Bosporus,  and  the  Monroe  Doctrine  of  the  United  States. 
Dividing  lines  between  political  parties  tend  to  follow  ap- 
proximately geographic  lines  of  cleavage ;  and  these  make 
themselves  apparent  at  recurring  intervals  of  national  up- 
heaval, perhaps  with  centuries  between,  like  a  submarine  vol- 
canic rift.  In  England  the  southeastern  plain  and  the  north- 
western uplands  have  been  repeatedly  arrayed  against  each 
other,  from  the  Roman  conquest  which  embraced  the  lowlands 
up  to  about  the  500-foot  contour  line,1  through  the  War  of 
the  Roses  and  the  Civil  War,2  to  the  struggle  for  the  repeal 
of  the  Corn  Laws  and  the  great  Reform  Bill  of  1832.3 
Though  the  boundary  lines  have  been  only  roughly  the  same 
and  each  district  has  contained  opponents  of  the  dominant 
local  party,  nevertheless  the  geographic  core  has  been  plain 
enough. 

The  land  is  a  more  conspicuous  factor  in  the  history  of 
states  than  in  the  history  of  society,  but  not  more  necessary 
and  potent.  Wars,  which  constitute  so  large  a  part  of  political 
history,  have  usually  aimed  more  or  less  directly  at  acquisition 
or  retention  of  territory;  they  have  made  every  petty  quar- 
rel the  pretext  for  mulcting  the  weaker  nation  of  part  of  its 
land.  Political  maps  are  therefore  subject  to  sudden  and 
radical  alterations,  as  when  France's  name  was  wiped  off  the 
North  American  continent  in  1763,  or  when  recently  Spain's 
sovereignty  in  the  Western  Hemisphere  was  obliterated.  But 
the  race  stocks,  languages,  customs,  and  institutions  of  both 
France  and  Spain  remained  after  the  flags  had  departed.  The 
reason  is  that  society  is  far  more  deeply  rooted  in  the  land 
than  is  a  state,  does  not  expand  or  contract  its  area  so  readily. 
Society  is  always,  in  a  sense,  adscripta  glebae;  an  expanding 
state  which  incorporates  a  new  piece  of  territory  inevitably 
incorporates  its  inhabitants,  unless  it  exterminates  or  expels 
them.  Yet  because  racial  and  social  geography  change 
slowly,  quietly  and  imperceptibly,  like  all  those  fundamental 
processes  which  we  call  growth,  it  is  not  so  easy  and  obvious 
a  task  to  formulate  a  natural  law  for  the  territorial  relations 
of  the  various  hunter,  pastoral  nomadic,  agricultural,  and 


SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND  53 

industrial    types    of    society    as    for    those    of    the    growing 
state. 

Most  systems  of  sociology  treat  man  as  if  he  were  in  some  Land 
way  detached  from  the  earth's  surface;  they  ignore  the  land  basis 
basis  of  society.  The  anthropo-geographer  recognizes  the 
various  social  forces,  economic  and  psychologic,  which  soci- 
ologists regard  as  the  cement  of  societies ;  but  he  has  some- 
thing to  add.  He  sees  in  the  land  occupied  by  a  primitive 
iribe  or  a  highly  organized  state  the  underlying  material 
bond  holding  society  together,  the  ultimate  basis  of  their 
fundamental  social  activities,  which  are  therefore  derivatives 
from  the  land.  He  sees  the  common  territory  exercising  an 
integrating  force, — weak  in  primitive  communities  where  the 
group  has  established  only  a  few  slight  and  temporary  rela- 
tions with  its  soil,  so  that  this  low  social  complex  breaks  up 
readily  like  its  organic  counterpart,  the  low  animal  organism 
found  in  an  amoeba;  he  sees  it  growing  stronger  with  every 
advance  in  civilization  involving  more  complex  relations  to  the 
land, — with  settled  habitations,  with  increased  density  of 
population,  with  a  discriminating  and  highly  differentiated 
use  of  the  soil,  with  the  exploitation  of  mineral  resources,  and 
finally  with  that  far-reaching  exchange  of  commodities  and 
ideas  which  means  the  establishment  of  varied  extra-territorial 
relations.  Finally,  the  modern  society  or  state  has  grown  into 
every  foot  of  its  own  soil,  exploited  its  every  geographic  ad- 
vantage, utilized  its  geographic  location  to  enrich  itself  by 
international  trade,  and  when  possible,  to  absorb  outlying 
territories  by  means  of  colonies.  The  broader  this  geographic 
base,  the  richer,  more  varied  its  resources,  and  the  more 
favorable  its  climate  to  their  exploitation,  the  more  numerous 
and  complex  are  the  connections  which  the  members  of  a  social 
group  can  establish  with  it,  and  through  it  with  each  other; 
or  in  other  words,  the  greater  may  be  its  ultimate  historical 
significance.  The  polar  regions  and  the  subtropical  deserts, 
on  the  other  hand,  permit  man  to  form  only  few  and  inter- 
mittent relations  with  any  one  spot,  restrict  economic  methods 
to  the  lower  stages  of  development,  produce  only  the  small, 
weak,  loosely  organized  horde,  which  never  evolves  into  a  state 
so  long  as  it  remains  in  that  retarding  environment. 


54  SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LA\D 

Morgan's  Man  in  his  larger  activities,  as  opposed  to  his  mere  physi- 

ological or  psychological  processes,  cannot  be  studied  apart 
from  the  land  which  he  inhabits.  Whether  we  consider  him 
>ingly  or  in  a  group — family,  clan,  tribe  or  state — we  must  al- 
u  :iys  consider  him  or  his  group  in  relation  to  a  piece  of  land. 
The  ancient  Irish  sept,  Highland  clan,  Russian  mir,  Cherokee 
hill-town,  Bedouin  tribe,  and  the  ancient  Helvetian  canton,  like 
the  political  state  of  history,  have  meant  always  a  group  of 
people  and  a  bit  of  land.  The  first  presupposes  the  second.  In 
all  cases  the  form  and  size  of  the  social  group,  the  nature  of  its 
activities,  the  trend  and  limit  of  its  development  will  be  strongly 
influenced  by  the  size  and  nature  of  its  habitat.  The  land  basi? 
is  Always  present,  in  spite  of  Morgan's  artificial  distinction 
between  a  theoretically  landless  societas,  held  together  only 
by  the  bond  of  common  blood,  and  the  political  clvitas  based 
upon  land.4  Though  primitive  society  found  its  conscious 
bond  in  common  blood,  nevertheless  the  land  bond  was  always 
there,  and  it  gradually  asserted  its  fundamental  character  with 
the  evolution  of  society. 

The  savage  and  barbarous  groups  which  in  Morgan's  classi- 
fication would  fall  under  the  head  of  societas  have  nevertheless 
a  clear  conception  of  their  ownership  of  the  tribal  lands  which 
they  use  in  common.  This  idea  is  probably  of  ver}-  primitive 
origin,  arising  from  the  association  of  a  group  with  its  habi- 
tat, whose  food  supply  they  regard  as  a  monopoly.5  This 
is  true  even  of  migratory  hunting  tribes.  They  claim  a  cer- 
tain area  whose  boundaries,  however,  are  often  ill-defined  and 
subject  to  fluctuations,  because  the  lands  are  not  held  by  per- 
manent occupancy  and  cultivation.  An  exceptional  case  is 
that  of  the  Shoshone  Indians,  inhabiting  the  barren  Utah 
basin  and  the  upper  valleys  of  the  Snake  and  Salmon  Rivers, 
who  are  accredited  with  no  sense  of  ownership  of  the  soil. 
In  their  natural  state  they  roved  about  in  small,  totally  unor- 
ganized bands  or  single  families,  and  changed  their  locations 
so  widely,  that  they  seemed  to  lay  no  claim  to  any  particular 
portion.  The  hopeless  sterility  of  the  region  and  its  poverty 
of  game  kept  its  destitute  inhabitants  constantly  on  the  move 
to  gather  in  the  meager  food  supply,  and  often  restricted  the 
social  group  to  the  family.6  Here  the  bond  between  lard 


LINGUISTIC 
^STOCKS 

OF 

AMERICAN 
INDIANS 

NORTH  OF  MEXICO 

BY 
J.  W.  POWELL. 


SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND  55 

and  tribe,  and  hence  between  the  members  of  the  tribe,  was  the 
weakest  possible. 

The  usual  type  of  tribal  ownership  was  presented  by  the  Land  bond 
Comanches,  nomadic  horse  Indians  who  occupied  the  grassy  in  hunter 
plains  of  northern  Texas.  They  held  their  territory  and  the 
game  upon  it  as  the  common  property  of  the  tribe,  and  jeal- 
ously guarded  the  integrity  of  their  domain.7  The  chief 
Algonquin  tribes,  who  occupied  the  territory  between  the 
Ohio  River  and  the  Great  Lakes,  had  each  its  separate 
domain,  within  which  it  shifted  its  villages  every  few  years; 
but  its  size  depended  upon  the  power  of  the  tribe  to  repel  en- 
croachment upon  its  hunting  grounds.  Relying  mainly  on 
the  chase  and  fishing,  little  on  agriculture,  for  their  subsis- 
tence, their  relations  to  their  soil  were  superficial  and  transi- 
tory, their  tribal  organization  in  a  high  degree  unstable.8 
Students  of  American  ethnology  generally  agree  that  most  of 
the  Indian  tribes  east  of  the  Mississippi  were  occupying 
definite  areas  at  the  time  of  the  discovery,  and  were  to  a  con- 
siderable extent  sedentary  and  agricultural.  Though  nomadic 
within  the  tribal  territory,  as  they  moved  with  the  season  in 
pursuit  of  game,  they  returned  to  their  villages,  which  were 
shifted  only  at  relatively  long  intervals.9 

The  political  organization  of  the  native  Australians,  low 
as  they  were  in  the  social  scale,  seems  to  have  been  based 
chiefly  on  the  claim  of  each  wretched  wandering  tribe  to  a 
definite  territory.10  In  north  central  Australia,  where  even  a 
very  sparse  population  has  sufficed  to  saturate  the  sterile  soil, 
tribal  boundaries  have  become  fixed  and  inviolable,  so  that 
even  war  brings  no  transfer  of  territory.  Land  and  people 
are  identified.  The  bond  is  cemented  by  their  primitive  re- 
ligion, for  the  tribe's  spirit  ancestors  occupied  this  special 
territory.11  In  a  like  manner  a  very  definite  conception  of 
tribal  ownership  of  land  prevails  among  the  Bushmen  and 
Bechuanas  of  South  Africa ;  and  to  the  pastoral  Hereros  the 
alienation  of  their  land  is  inconceivable.12  [See  map  page  105.] 

A  tribe  of  hunters  can  never  be  more  than  a  small  horde, 
because  the  simple,  monotonous  savage  economy  permits  no 
concentration  of  population,  no  division  of  labor  except  that 
between  the  sexes,  and  hence  no  evolution  of  classes.  The 


56  SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND 

common  economic  level  of  all  is  reflected  in  the  simple  social 
organization,13  which  necessarily  has  little  cohesion,  because 
the  group  must  be  prepared  to  break  up  and  scatter  in  smaller 
divisions,  when  its  members  increase  or  its  savage  supplies 
decrease  even  a  little.  Such  primitive  groups  cannot  grow 
into  larger  units,  because  these  would  demand  more  roots  sent 
down  into  the  sustaining  soil ;  but  they  multiply  by  fission,  like 
the  infusorial  monads,  and  thereafter  lead  independent  exist- 
ences remote  from  each  other.  This  is  the  explanation  of  mul- 
tiplication of  dialects  among  savage  tribes. 

Land  Fishing  tribes  have  their  chief  occupation  determined  by 

their  habitats,  which  are  found  along  well  stocked  rivers, 
lakes,  or  coastal  fishing  grounds.  Conditions  here  encourage 
an  early  adoption  of  sedentary  life,  discourage  wandering 
except  for  short  periods,  and  facilitate  the  introduction  of 
agriculture  wherever  conditions  of  climate  and  soil  permit. 
Hence  these  fisher  folk  develop  relatively  large  and  permanent 
social  groups,  as  testified  by  the  ancient  lake-villages  of  Switz- 
erland, based  upon  a  concentrated  food-supply  resulting  from 
a  systematic  and  often  varied  exploitation  of  the  local  re- 
sources. The  cooperation  and  submission  to  a  leader  necessary 
in  pelagic  fishing  often  gives  the  preliminary  training  for 
higher  political  organization.14  All  the  primitive  stocks  of  the 
Brazilian  Indians,  except  the  mountain  Ges,  are  fishermen  and 
agriculturists ;  hence  their  annual  migrations  are  kept  within 
narrow  limits.  Each  linguistic  group  occupies  a  fixed  and 
relatively  well  defined  district.15  Stanley  found  along  the 
Congo  large  permanent  villages  of  the  natives,  who  were  en- 
gaged in  fishing  and  tilling  the  fruitful  soil,  but  knew  little 
about  the  country  ten  miles  back  from  the  river.  These  two 
generous  means  of  subsistence  are  everywhere  combined  in 
Polynesia,  Micronesia  and  Melanesia;  there  they  are  asso- 
ciated with  dense  populations  and  often  with  advanced  po- 
litical organization,  as  we  find  it  in  the  feudal  monarchy  of 
Tonga  and  the  savage  Fiji  Islands.16  Fisher  tribes,  therefore, 
get  an  early  impulse  forward  in  civilization  ;1T  and  even  where 
conditions  do  not  permit  the  upward  step  to  agriculture,  these 
tribes  have  permanent  relations  with  their  land,  form  stable 
social  groups,  and  often  utilize  their  location  on  a  natural 


SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND  57 

highway  to  develop  systematic  trade.  For  instance,  on  the 
northwest  coast  of  British  Columbia  and  Southern  Alaska,  the 
Haida,  Tlingit  and  Tsimshean  Indians  have  portioned  out  all 
the  land  about  their  seaboard  villages  among  the  separate 
families  or  households  as  hunting,  fishing,  and  berrying 
grounds.  These  are  regarded  as  private  property  and  are 
handed  down  from  generation  to  generation.  If  they  are  used 
by  anyone  other  than  the  owner,  the  privilege  must  be  paid 
for.  Every  salmon  stream  has  its  proprietor,  whose  summer 
camp  can  be  seen  set  up  at  the  point  where  the  run  of  the  fish 
is  greatest.  Combined  with  this  private  property  in  land 
there  is  a  brisk  trade  up  and  down  the  coast,  and  a  tendency 
toward  feudalism  in  the  village  communities,  owing  to  the 
association  of  power  and  social  distinction  with  wealth  and 
property  in  land.18 

Among  pastoral  nomads,  among  whom  a  systematic  use  of  Land 
their  territory  begins  to  appear,  and  therefore  a  more  definite  bond  in 
relation  between  land  and  people,  we  find  a  more  distinct  P88*0™! 
notion  than  among  wandering  hunters  of  territorial  ownership, 
the  right  of  communal  use,  and  the  distinct  obligation  of 
common  defense.  Hence  the  social  bond  is  drawn  closer.  The 
nomad  identifies  himself,  with  a  certain  district,  which  be- 
longs to  his  tribe  by  tradition  or  conquest,  and  has  its  clearly 
defined  boundaries.  Here  he  roams  between  its  summer  and 
winter  pastures,  possibly  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  apart, 
visits  its  small  arable  patches  in  the  spring  for  his  limited 
agricultural  ventures,  and  returns  to  them  in  the  fall  to  reap 
their  meager  harvest.  Its  springs,  streams,  or  wells  assume 
enhanced  value,  are  things  to  be  fought  for,  owing  to  the 
prevailing  aridity  of  summer;  while  ownership  of  a  certain 
tract  of  desert  or  grassland  carries  with  it  a  certain  right 
in  the  bordering  settled  district  as  an  area  of  plunder.19 

The  Kara-Kirghis  stock,  who  have  been  located  since  the 
sixteenth  century  on  Lake  Issik-Kul,  long  ago  portioned  out 
the  land  among  the  separate  families,  and  determined  their 
limits  by  natural  features  of  the  landscape.20  Sven  Hedin 
found  on  the  Tarim  River  poles  set  up  to  mark  the  boundary 
between  the  Shah-yar  and  Kuchar  tribal  pastures.21  John 
de  Piano  Carpini,  traveling  over  southern  Russia  in  1246,  im- 


58  SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND 


Geograph- 
ical mark 
of  low- 
type  so- 
cieties. 


mediately  after  the  Tartar  conquest,  found  that  the  Dnieper, 
Don,  Volga  and  Ural  rivers  were  all  boundaries  between  do- 
mains of  the  various  millionaries  or  thousands,  into  which  the 
Tartar  horde  was  organized.22  The  population  of  this  vast 
country  was  distributed  according  to  the  different  degrees  of 
fertility  and  the  size  of  the  pastoral  groups.23  Volney  observed 
the  same  distinction  in  the  distribution  of  the  Bedouins  of 
Syria.  He  found  the  barren  cantons  held  by  small,  widely  scat- 
tered tribes,  as  in  the  Desert  of  Suez ;  but  the  cultivable  can- 
tons, like  the  Hauran  and  the  Pachalic  of  Aleppo,  closely 
dotted  by  the  encampments  of  the  pastoral  owners.24 

The  large  range  of  territory  held  by  a  nomadic  tribe 
is  all  successively  occupied  in  the  course  of  a  year,  but  each 
part  only  for  a  short  period  of  time.  A  pastoral  use  of  even 
a  good  district  necessitates  a  move  of  five  or  ten  miles  every 
few  weeks.  The  whole,  large  as  it  may  be,  is  absolutely  neces- 
sary for  the  annual  support  of  the  tribe.  Hence  any  outside 
encroachment  upon  their  territory  calls  for  the  united  resist- 
ance of  the  tribe.  This  joint  or  social  action  is  dictated  by 
their  common  interest  in  pastures  and  herds.  The  social  ad- 
ministration embodied  in  the  apportionment  of  pastures  among 
the  families  or  clans  grows  out  of  the  systematic  use  of  their 
territory,  which  represents  a  closer  relation  between  land  and 
people  than  is  found  among  purely  hunting  tribes.  Overcrowd- 
ing by  men  or  livestock,  on  the  other  hand,  puts  a  strain  upon 
the  social  bond.  When  Abraham  and  Lot,  typical  nomads, 
returned  from  Egypt  to  Canaan  with  their  large  flocks  and 
herds,  rivalry  for  the  pastures  occasioned  conflicts  among 
their  shepherds,  so  the  two  sheiks  decided  to  separate.  Abra- 
ham took  the  hill  pastures  of  Judea,  and  Lot  the  plains  of 
Jordan  near  the  settled  district  of  Sodom.25 

The  larger  the  amount  of  territory  necessary  for  the  sup- 
port of  a  given  number  of  people,  whether  the  proportion 
be  due  to  permanent  poverty  of  natural  resources  as  in  the 
Eskimo  country,  or  to  retarded  economic  development  as 
among  the  Indians  of  primitive  America  or  the  present  Su- 
danese, the  looser  is  the  connection  between  land  and  people, 
and  the  lower  the  type  of  social  organization.  For  such 
groups  the  organic  theory  of  society  finds  an  apt  description. 


SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND  59 

To  quote  Spencer,  "The  original  clusters,  animal  and  social, 
are  not  only  small,  but  they  lack  density.  Creatures  of  low 
type  occupy  large  spaces  considering  the  small  quantity  of 
animal  substance  they  contain ;  and  low-type  societies  spread 
over  areas  that  are  wide  relatively  to  the  number  of  their 
component  individuals."2  In  common  language  this  means 
small  tribes  or  even  detached  families  sparsely  scattered  over 
wide  areas,  living  in  temporary  huts  or  encampments  of  tepees 
and  tents  shifted  from  place  to  place,  making  no  effort  to 
modify  the  surface  of  the  land  beyond  scratching  the  soil  to 
raise  a  niggardly  crop  of  grain  or  tubers,  and  no  investment 
of  labor  that  might  attach  to  one  spot  the  sparse  and  migrant 
population.  [See  density  maps  pages  8  and  9.] 

The  superiority  over  this  social  type  of  the  civilized  state  Land  and 
lies  in  the  highly  organized  utilization  of  its  whole  geographic  state, 
basis  by  the  mature  community,  and  in  the  development  of 
government  that  has  followed  the  increasing  density  of  popu- 
lation and  multiplication  of  activities  growing  out  of  this 
manifold  use  of  the  land.  Sedentary  agriculture,  which  forms 
its  initial  economic  basis,  is  followed  by  industrialism  and  com- 
merce. The  migratory  life  presents  only  limited  accumulation 
of  capital,  and  restricts  narrowly  its  forms.  Permanent  settle- 
ment encourages  accumulation  in  every  form,  and  under  grow- 
ing pressure  of  population  slowly  reveals  the  possibilities 
of  every  foot  of  ground,  of  every  geographic  advantage. 
These  are  the  fibers  of  the  land  which  become  woven  into  the 
whole  fabric  of  the  nation's  life.  These  a"re  the  geographic 
elements  constituting  the  soil  in  which  empires  are  rooted; 
they  rise  in  the  sap  of  the  nation. 

The  geographic  basis  of  a  state  embodies  a  whole  complex  Strength 
of  physical  conditions  which  may  influence  its  historical  de-  °*  tne 
velopment.     The  most  potent  of  these  are  its  size  and  zonal  * 
location ;  its  situation,  whether  continental  or  insular,  inland 
or  maritime,  on  the  open  ocean  or  an  enclosed  sea ;  its  bounda- 
ries, whether  drawn  by  sea,  mountain,  desert  or  the  faint  de- 
marking  line  of  a  river;  its  forested  mountains,  grassy  plains, 
and  arable  lowlands ;  its  climate  and  drainage  system ;  finally 
its  equipment  with  plant  and  animal  life,  whether  indigenous 
or  imported,  and  its  mineral  resources.     When  a  state  has 


60  SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND 


Weak 
land  tenure 
of  hunt- 
ing and 
pastoral 
tribes. 


Land  and 

food 

supply. 


taken  advantage  of  all  its  natural  conditions,  the  land  becomes 
a  constituent  part  of  the  state,27  modifying  the  people  which 
inhabit  it,  modified  by  them  in  turn,  till  the  connection  be- 
tween the  two  becomes  so  strong  by  reciprocal  interaction, 
that  the  people  cannot  be  understood  apart  from  their  land. 
Any  attempt  to  divide  them  theoretically  reduces  the  social 
or  political  body  to  a  cadaver,  valuable  for  the  study  of 
structural  anatomy  after  the  method  of  Herbert  Spencer, 
but  throwing  little  light  upon  the  vital  processes. 

A  people  who  makes  only  a  transitory  or  superficial  use 
of  its  land  has  upon  it  no  permanent  or  secure  hold.  The 
power  to  hold  is  measured  by  the  power  to  use;  hence  the 
weak  tenure  of  hunting  and  pastoral  tribes.  Between  their 
scattered  encampments  at  any  given  time  are  wide  interstices, 
inviting  occupation  by  any  settlers  who  know  how  to  make 
better  use  of  the  soil.  This  explains  the  easy  intrusion  of 
the  English  colonists  into  the  sparsely  tenanted  territory 
of  the  Indians,  of  the  agricultural  Chinese  into  the  pasture 
lands  of  the  Mongols  beyond  the  Great  Wall,  of  the 
American  pioneers  into  the  hunting  grounds  of  the  Hudson 
Bay  Company  in  the  disputed  Oregon  country.28  The  frail 
bonds  which  unite  these  lower  societies  to  their  soil  are  easily 
ruptured  and  the  people  themselves  dislodged,  while  their  land 
is  appropriated  by  the  intruder.  But  who  could  ever  conceive 
of  dislodging  the  Chinese  or  the  close-packed  millions  of  India? 
A  modern  state  with  a  given  population  on  a  wide  area  is 
more  vulnerable  than  another  of  like  population  more  closely 
distributed;  but  the  former  has  the  advantage  of  a  reserve 
territory  for  future  growth.28  This  was  the  case  of  Kursach- 
sen  and  Brandenburg  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  of  the 
United  States  throughout  its  history.  But  beside  the  danger 
of  inherent  weakness  before  attack,  a  condition  of  relative 
underpopulation  always  threatens  a  retardation  of  develop- 
ment. Easy-going  man  needs  the  prod  of  a  pressing  popula- 
tion. [Compare  maps  pages  8  and  103  for  examples.] 

Food  is  the  urgent  and  recurrent  need  of  individuals  and  of 
society.  It  dictates  their  activities  in  relation  to  their  land 
at  every  stage  of  economic  development,  fixes  the  locality  of 
the  encampment  or  village,  and  determines  the  size  of 


SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND  61 

the  territory  from  which  sustenance  is  drawn.  The  length 
of  residence  in  one  place  depends  upon  whether  the 
springs  of  its  food  supply  are  perennial  or  intermittent, 
while  the  abundance  of  their  flow  determines  how  large  a 
population  a  given  piece  of  land  can  support. 

Hunter  and   fisher   folk,   relying   almost  exclusively   upon  Advance 
what  their  land  produces   of  itself,  need  a  large  area  and  fr°m 

derive  from  it  only  an  irregular  food  supply,  which  in  winter  natural   to 
,.    .   .  ,  £*  *>'         ...  .,     artificial 

diminishes   to  the  verge   or   famine.      The  transition  to  the  bagig  of 

pastoral  stage  has  meant  the  substitution  of  an  artificial  subsistence, 
for  a  natural  basis  of  subsistence,  and  therewith  a  change 
which  more  than  any  other  one  thing  has  inaugurated  the 
advance  from  savagery  to  civilization.30  From  the  standpoint 
of  economics,  the  forward  stride  has  consisted  in  the  applica- 
tion of  capital  in  the  form  of  flocks  and  herds  to  the  task  of 
feeding  the  wandering  horde  ;31  from  the  standpoint  of  alimen- 
tation, in  the  guarantee  of  a  more  reliable  and  generally 
more  nutritious  food  supply,  which  enables  population  to 
grow  more  steadily  and  rapidly;  from  the  standpoint  of 
geography,  in  the  marked  reduction  in  the  per  capita  amount 
of  land  necessary  to  yield  an  adequate  and  stable  food  supply. 
Pastoral  nomadism  can  support  in  a  given  district  of  average 
quality  from  ten  to  twenty  times  as  many  souls  as  can  the 
chase ;  but  in  this  respect  is  surpassed  from  twenty  to  thirty- 
fold  by  the  more  productive  agriculture.  While  the  subsis- 
tence of  a  nomad  requires  100  to  200  acres  of  land,  for 
that  of  a  skillful  farmer  from  1  to  2  acres  suffice.32  In 
contrast,  the  land  of  the  Indians  living  in  the  Hudson  Bay 
Territory  in  1857  averaged  10  square  miles  per  capita;  that 
of  the  Indians  in  the  United  States  in  1825,  subsidized 
moreover  by  the  government,  1*4  square  miles.33 

With  transition  to  the  sedentary  life  of  agriculture,  society  Land  in 
makes  a  further  gain  over  nomadism  in  the  closer  integra-  relation  to 
tion  of  its  social  units,  due  to  permanent  residence  in  larger  aSncu  ture< 
and  more  complex  groups ;   in  the  continuous  release  of  labor 
from  the  task  of  mere  food-getting  for  higher  activities,  re- 
sulting especially  in  the  rapid  evolution  of  the  home;  and 
finally  in  the  more  elaborate  organization  in  the  use  of  the 
land,  leading  to  economic  differentiation  of  different  locali- 


62  SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND 


Migratory 
agriculture. 


Geographic 
checks  to 
progress. 


ties  and  to  a  rapid  increase  in  the  population  supported  by 
a  given  area,  so  that  the  land  becomes  the  dominant  cohesive 
force  in  society.  [See  maps  pages  8  and  9.] 

Agriculture  is  adopted  at  first  on  a  small  scale  as  an  ad- 
junct to  the  chase  or  herding.  It  tends  therefore  to  partake 
of  the  same  extensive  and  nomadic  character34  as  these  other 
methods  of  gaining  subsistence,  and  only  gradually  becomes 
sedentary  and  intensive.  Such  was  the  superficial,  migratory 
tillage  of  most  American  Indians,  shifting  with  the  village 
in  the  wake  of  the  retreating  game  or  in  search  of  fresh  un- 
exhausted soil.  Such  is  the  agriculture  of  the  primitive 
Korkus  in  the  Mahadeo  Hills  in  Central  India.  They  clear  a 
forested  slope  by  burning,  rake  over  the  ashes  in  which  they 
sow  their  grain,  and  reap  a  fairly  good  crop  in  the  fertilized 
soil.  The  second  year  the  clearing  yields  a  reduced  product 
and  the  third  year  is  abandoned.  When  the  hamlet  of  five  or 
six  families  has  exhausted  all  the  land  about  it,  it  moves  to 
a  new  spot  to  repeat  the  process.35 

The  same  superficial,  extensive  tillage,  with  abandonment 
of  fields  every  few  years,  prevails  in  the  Tartar  districts  of 
the  Russian  steppes,  as  it  did  among  the  cattle-raising  Ger- 
mans at  the  beginning  of  their  history.  Tacitus  says  of 
them,  Arva  per  annos  mutant  et  superest  ager,36  commenting 
at  the  same  time  upon  their  abundance  of  land  and  their 
reluctance  to  till.  Where  nomadism  is  made  imperative  by 
aridity,  the  agriculture  which  accompanies  it  tends  to  be- 
come fixed,  owing  to  the  few  localities  blessed  with  an  irrigating 
stream  to  moisten  the  soil.  These  spots,  generally  selected  for 
the  winter  residence,  have  their  soil  enriched,  moreover,  by  the 
long  stay  of  the  herd  and  thus  avoid  exhaustion.37  Often,  how- 
ever, in  enclosed  basins  the  salinity  of  the  irrigating  streams 
in  their  lower  course  ruins  the  fields  after  one  or  two  crops,  and 
necessitates  a  constant  shifting  of  the  cultivated  patches; 
hence  agriculture  remains  subsidiary  to  the  yield  of  the  pas- 
tures. This  condition  and  effect  is  conspicuous  along  the 
termini  of  the  streams  draining  the  northern  slope  of  the 
Kuen  Lun  into  the  Tarim  basin.38 

The  desultory,  intermittent,  extensive  use  of  the  land  prac- 
tised by  hunters  and  nomads  tends,  under  the  growing  pres- 


SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND  63 

sure  of  population,  to  pass  into  the  systematic,  continuous, 
intensive  use  practised  by  the  farmer,  except  where  nature 
presents  positive  checks  to  the  transition.  The  most  obvious 
check  consists  in  adverse  conditions  of  climate  and  soil.  Where 
agriculture  meets  insurmountable  obstacles,  like  the  intense 
cold  of  Arctic  Siberia  and  Lapland,  or  the  alkaline  soils  of 
Nevada  and  the  Caspian  Depression,  or  the  inadequate  rain- 
fall of  Mongolia  and  Central  Arabia,  the  land  can  produce  no 
higher  economic  and  social  groups  than  pastoral  hordes. 
Hence  shepherd  folk  are  found  in  their  purest  types  in  deserts 
and  steppes,  where  conditions  early  crystallized  the  social 
form  and  checked  development.  [Rainfall  map  chap.  XIV.] 

Adverse  conditions  of  climate  and  soil  are  not  the  only  Native 
factors  in  this  retardation.  The  very  unequal  native  equip-  animal  and 
ment  of  the  several  continents  with  plant  and  animal  forms  Plant  ! 
likely  to  accelerate  the  advance  to  nomadism  and  agriculture 
also  enters  into  the  equation.  In  Australia,  the  lack  of  a 
single  indigenous  mammal  fit  for  domestication  and  of  all 
cereals  blocked  from  the  start  the  pastoral  and  agricultural 
development  of  the  natives.  Hence  at  the  arrival  of  the 
Europeans,  Australia  presented  the  unique  spectacle  of  a 
whole  continent  with  its  population  still  held  in  the  vise 
of  nature.  The  Americas  had  a  limited  variety  of  animals 
susceptible  of  domestication,  but  were  more  meagerly  equipped 
than  the  Old  World.  Yet  the  Eskimo  failed  to  tame  and  herd 
the  reindeer,  though  their  precarious  food-supply  furnished 
a  motive  for  the  transition.  Moreover,  an  abundance  of  grass 
and  reindeer  moss  (Cladonia  rangiferina),  and  congenial 
climatic  conditions  favored  it  especially  for  the  Alaskan 
Eskimo,  who  had,  besides,  the  nearby  example  of  the  Siberian 
Chukches  as  reindeer  herders.39  The  buffalo,  whose  domesti- 
cability  has  been  proved,  was  never  utilized  in  this  way  by 
the  Indians,  though  the  Spaniard  Gomara  writes  of  one 
tribe,  living  in  the  sixteenth  century  in  the  southwestern 
part  of  what  is  now  United  States  territory,  whose  chief  wealth 
consisted  in  herds  of  tame  buffalo.40  North  America,  at  the 
time  of  the  discovery,  saw  only  the  dog  hanging  about  the 
lodges  of  the  Indians;  but  in  South  America  the  llama  and 
alpaca,  confined  to  the  higher  levels  of  the  Andes  (10,000  to 


64  SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND 


1 


Land  per 
capita 
under 

various  cul- 
tural and 
geographic 
conditions. 


15,000  feet  elevation)  were  used  in  domestic  herds  only  in  the 
mountain-rimmed  valleys  of  ancient  Peru,  where,  owing  to 
the  restricted  areas  of  these  intermontane  basins,  stock-raising 
early  became  stationary,41  as  we  find  it  in  the  Alps.  More- 
over, the  high  ridges  of  the  Andes  supported  a  species  of  grass 
called  ichu,  growing  up  to  the  snowline  from  the  equator  to 
the  southern  extremity  of  Patagonia.  Its  geographical  distri- 
bution coincided  with  that  of  the  llama  and  alpaca,  whose 
chief  pasturage  it  furnished.42  In  contrast,  the  absence  of 
any  wild  fodder  plants  in  Japan,  and  the  exclusion  of  all  for- 
eign forms  by  the  successful  competition  of  the  native  bamboo 
grass  have  together  eliminated  pastoral  life  from  the  economic 
history  of  the  island. 

The  Old  World,  on  the  other  hand,  furnished  an  abundant 
supply  of  indigenous  animals  susceptible  of  domestication,  and 
especially  those  fitted  for  nomadic  life,  such  as  the  camel, 
horse,  ass,  sheep  and  goat.  Hence  it  produced  in  the  wide- 
spread grasslands  and  deserts  of  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa  the 
most  perfect  types  of  pastoral  development  in  its  natural  or 
nomadic  form.  Moreover,  the  early  history  of  the  civilized 
agricultural  peoples  of  these  three  continents  reveals  their 
previous  pastoral  mode  of  life. 

North  and  South  America  offered  over  most  of  their  area 
conditions  of  climate  and  soil  highly  favorable  to  agriculture, 
and  a  fair  list  of  indigenous  cereals,  tubers,  and  pulses  yield- 
ing goodly  crops  even  to  superficial  tillage.  Maize  espe- 
cially was  admirably  suited  for  a  race  of  semi-migratory  hun- 
ters. It  could  be  sown  without  plowing,  ripened  in  a  warm 
season  even  in  ninety  days,  could  be  harvested  without  a  sickle 
and  at  the  pleasure  of  the  cultivator,  and  needed  no  prepara- 
tion beyond  roasting  before  it  was  ready  for  food.43  The 
beans  and  pumpkins  which  the  Indians  raised  also  needed 
only  a  short  season.  Hence  many  Indian  tribes,  while  showing 
no  trace  of  pastoral  development,  combined  with  the  chase 
a  semi-nomadic  agriculture ;  and  in  a  few  districts  where 
geographic  conditions  had  applied  peculiar  pressure,  they  had 
accomplished  the  transition  to  sedentary  agriculture. 

Every  advance  to  a  higher  state  of  civilization  has  meant 
a  progressive  decrease  in  the  amount  of  land  necessary  for  the 


SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND  65 

support  of  the  individual,  and  a  progressive  increase  in  the 
relations  between  man  and  his  habitat.  The  stage  of  social 
development  remaining  the  same,  the  per  capita  amount  of  land 
decreases  also  from  poorer  to  better  endowed  geographical 
districts,  and  with  every  invention  which  brings  into  use  some 
natural  resource.  The  following  classification44  illustrates  the 
relation  of  density  of  population  to  various  geographic  and 
socio-economic  conditions. 

Hunter  tribes  on  the  outskirts  of  the  habitable  area,  as  in 
Arctic  America  and  Siberia,  require  from  70  to  200  square 
miles  per  capita ;  in  arid  lands,  like  the  Kalahari  Desert  and 
Patagonia,  40  to  200  square  miles  per  capita;  in  choice  dis- 
tricts and  combining  with  the  chase  some  primitive  agriculture, 
as  did  the  Cherokee,  Shawnee  and  Iroquois  Indians,  the  Dyaks 
of  Borneo  and  the  Papuans  of  New  Guinea,  1/2  to  2  square 
miles  per  capita. 

Pastoral  nomads  show  a  density  of  from  2  to  5  to  the  square  >  ^ 
mile ;  practicing  some  agriculture,  as  in  Kordofan  and  Sennar 
districts  of  eastern  Sudan,  10  to  15  to  the  square  mile.  Agri- 
culture, undeveloped  but  combined  with  some  trade  and  in- 
dustry as  in  Equatorial  Africa,  Borneo  and  most  of  the  Cen- 
tral American  states,  supports  5  to  15  to  the  square  mile; 
practised  with  European  methods  in  young  or  colonial  lands, 
as  in  Arkansas,  Texas,  Minnesota,  Hawaii,  Canada  and 
Argentine,  or  in  European  lands  with  unfavorable  climate, 
up  to  25  to  the  square  mile. 

Pure  agricultural  lands  of  central  Europe  support  100  to 
the  square  mile,  and  those  of  southern  Europe,  200;  when 
combining  some  industry,  from  250  to  300.  But  these  figures 
rise  to  500  or  more  in  lowland  India  and  China.  Industrial 
districts  of  modern  Europe,  such  as  England,  Belgium, 
Saxony,  Departments  Nord  and  Rhone  in  France,  show  a 
density  of  500  to  800  to  the  square  mile.  [See  maps  pages 
8  and  9.] 

With  every  increase  of  the  population  inhabiting  a  given  Density  of 
area,  and  with  the  consequent  multiplication  and  constriction  population 
of  the  bonds  uniting  society  with  its  land,  comes  a  growing  a 
necessity  for  a  more  highly  organized  government,  both  to  re- 
duce friction  within  and  to  secure  to  the  people  the  land  on 


66  SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND 


Territorial 
expansion 
of  the 
state. 


Checks  to 
population. 


which  and  by  which  they  live.  Therefore  protection  becomes 
a  prime  function  of  the  state.  It  wards  off  outside  at- 
tack which  may  aim  at  acquisition  of  its  territory,  or  an 
invasion  of  its  rights,  or  curtailment  of  its  geographic  sphere 
of  activity.  The  modern  industrial  state,  furthermore,  with 
the  purpose  of  strengthening  the  nation,  assists  or  itself 
undertakes  the  construction  of  highways,  canals,  and  rail- 
roads, and  the  maintenance  of  steamship  lines.  These 
encourage  the  development  of  natural  resources  and  of 
commerce,  and  hence  lay  the  foundation  for  an  increased 
population,  by  multiplying  the  relations  between  land  and 
people. 

A  like  object  is  attained  by  territorial  expansion,  which 
often  follows  in  the  wake  of  commercial  expansion.  This 
strengthens  the  nation  positively  by  enlarging  its  geographic 
base,  and  negatively  by  forcing  back  the  boundaries  of  its 
neighbors.  The  expansion  of  the  Thirteen  Colonies  from  the 
Atlantic  slope  to  the  Mississippi  River  and  the  Great  Lakes 
by  the  treaty  concluding  the  Revolution  was  a  strong 
guarantee  of  the  survival  of  the  young  Republic  against 
future  aggressions  either  of  England  or  Spain,  though  it 
exchanged  the  scientific  or  protecting  boundary  of  the  Ap- 
palachian Mountains  for  the  unscientific  and  exposed 
boundary  of  a  river.  The  expansion  to  the  Rocky  Mountains 
by  the  Louisiana  purchase  not  only  gave  wider  play  to  na- 
tional energies,  stimulated  natural  increase  of  population, 
and  attracted  immigration,  but  it  eliminated  a  dangerous 
neighbor  in  the  French,  and  placed  a  wide  buffer  of  unten- 
anted  land  between  the  United  States  and  the  petty  aggres- 
sions of  the  Spanish  in  Mexico.  Rome's  expansion  into  the 
valley  of  the  Po,  as  later  into  Trans-Alpine  Gaul  and  Ger- 
many, had  for  its  purpose  the  protection  of  the  peninsula 
against  barbarian  inroads.  Japan's  recent  aggression  against 
the  Russians  in  the  Far  East  was  actuated  by  the  realization 
that  she  had  to  expand  into  Korea  at  the  cost  of  Muscovite 
ascendency,  or  contract  later  at  the  cost  of  her  own  independ- 
ence. 

If  a  state  lacks  the  energy  and  national  purpose,  like 
Italy,  or  the  possibility,  like  Switzerland,  for  territorial 


SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND  67 

expansion,  and  accepts  its  boundaries  as  final,  the  natural  in- 
crease of  population  upon  a  fixed  area  produces  an  increased 
density,  unless  certain  social  forces  counteract  it.  Without 
these  forces,  the  relation  of  men  to  the  land  would  have  tended 
to  modify  everywhere  in  the  same  way.  Increase  in  numbers 
would  have  been  attended  by  a  corresponding  decrease  in  the 
amount  of  land  at  the  disposal  of  each  individual.  Those 
states  which,  like  Norway  and  Switzerland,  cannot  expand  and 
which  have  exploited  their  natural  resources  to  the  utmost, 
must  resign  themselves  to  the  emigration  of  their  redundant 
population.  But  those  which  have  remained  within  their  own 
boundaries  and  have  adopted  a  policy  of  isolation,  like  China, 
feudal  Japan  during  its  two  and  a  half  centuries  of  seclusion, 
and  numerous  Polynesian  islands,  have  been  forced  to  war 
with  nature  itself  by  checking  the  operation  of  the  law  of 
natural  increase.  All  the  repulsive  devices  contributing  to 
this  end,  whether  infanticide,  abortion,  cannibalism,  the  sanc- 
tioned murder  of  the  aged  and  infirm,  honorable  suicide,  poly- 
andry or  persistent  war,  are  the  social  deformities  consequent 
upon  suppressed  growth.  Such  artificial  checks  upon  popula- 
tion are  more  conspicuous  in  natural  regions  with  sharply  de- 
fined boundaries,  like  islands  and  oases,  as  Malthus  observed  ;45 
but  they  are  visible  also  among  savage  tribes  whose  boundaries 
are  fixed  not  by  natural  features  but  by  the  mutual  repulsion 
and  rivalry  characterizing  the  stage  of  development,  and 
whose  limit  of  population  is  reduced  by  their  low  economic 
status. 

There  is  a  great  difference  between  those  states  whose  inhabi-  Ertra-terri- 
tants  subsist  exclusively  from  the  products  of  their  own  coun-  toria| 
try  and  those  which  rely  more  or  less  upon  other  lands.  Great 
industrial  states,  like  England  and  Germany,  which  derive 
only  a  portion  of  their  food  and  raw  material  from  their 
own  territory,  supply  their  dense  populations  through  inter- 
national trade.  Interruption  of  such  foreign  commerce  is 
disastrous  to  the  population  at  home;  hence  the  state  by  a 
navy  protects  the  lines  of  communication  with  those  far- 
away lands  of  wheat  fields  and  cattle  ranch.  This  is  no  purely 
modern  development.  Athens  in  the  time  of  Pericles  used  her 
navy  not  only  to  secure  her  political  domination  in  the 


68  SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND 


Geography 
in  the 
philosophy 
of  history. 


Theory  of 
progress 
from  the 
standpoint 
of  geo- 
graphy. 


Aegean,  but  also  her  connections  with  the  colonial  wheat  lands 
about  the  Euxine. 

The  modern  state  strives  to  render  this  circle  of  trade 
both  large  and  permanent  by  means  of  commercial  treaties, 
customs-unions,  trading-posts  and  colonies.  Thus  while  soci- 
ety at  home  is  multiplying  its  relations  with  its  own  land, 
the  state  is  enabling  it  to  multiply  also  its  relations  with 
the  whole  producing  world.  While  at  home  the  nation  is  be- 
coming more  closely  knit  together  through  the  common  bond 
of  the  fatherland,  in  the  world  at  large  humanity  is  evolving 
a  brotherhood  of  man  by  the  union  of  each  with  all  through 
the  common  growing  bond  of  the  earth.  Hence  we  cannot 
avoid  the  question :  Are  we  in  process  of  evolving  a  social  idea 
vaster  than  that  underlying  nationality?  Do  the  Socialists 
hint  to  us  the  geographic  basis  of  this  new  development, 
when  they  describe  themselves  as  an  international  political 
party  ? 

It  is  natural  that  the  old  philosophy  of  history  should  have 
fixed  its  attention  upon  the  geographic  basis  of  historical 
events.  Searching  for  the  permanent  and  common  in  the  out- 
wardly mutable,  it  found  always  at  the  bottom  of  changing 
events  the  same  solid  earth.  Biology  has  had  the  same  ex- 
perience. The  history  of  the  life  forms  of  the  world  leads  al- 
ways back  to  the  land  on  which  that  life  arose,  spread,  and 
struggled  for  existence.  The  philosophy  of  history  was  supe- 
rior to  early  sociology,  in  that  its  method  was  one  of  historical 
comparison,  which  inevitably  guided  it  back  to  the  land  as  the 
material  for  the  first  generalization.  Thus  it  happens  that  the 
importance  of  the  land  factor  in  history  was  approached  first 
from  the  philosophical  side.  Montesquieu  and  Herder  had 
no  intention  of  solving  sociological  and  geographical  problems, 
when  they  considered  the  relation  of  peoples  and  states  to 
their  soil ;  they  wished  to  understand  the  purpose  and  destiny 
of  man  as  an  inhabitant  of  the  earth. 

The  study  of  history  is  always,  from  one  standpoint,  a  study 
of  progress.  Yet  after  all  the  century-long  investigation  of 
the  history  of  every  people  working  out  its  destiny  in  its 
given  environment,  struggling  against  the  difficulties  of  its 
habitat,  progressing  when  it  overcame  them  and  retrograding 


SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND  69 

when  it  failed,  advancing  when  it  made  the  most  of  its  op- 
portunities and  declining  when  it  made  less  or  succumbed  to 
an  invader  armed  with  better  economic  or  political  methods 
to  exploit  the  land,  it  is  amazing  how  little  the  land,  in  which 
all  activities  finally  root,  has  been  taken  into  account  in  the 
discussion  of  progress.  Nevertheless,  for  a  theory  of  progress 
it  offers  a  solid  basis.  From  the  standpoint  of  the  land 
social  and  political  organizations,  in  successive  stages  of 
development,  embrace  ever  increasing  areas,  and  make  them 
support  ever  denser  populations ;  and  in  this  concentration 
of  population  and  intensification  of  economic  development 
they  assume  ever  higher  forms.  It  does  not  suffice  that  a  peo- 
ple, in  order  to  progress,  should  extend  and  multiply  only  its 
local  relations  to  its  land.  This  would  eventuate  in  arrested  de- 
velopment, such  as  Japan  showed  at  the  time  of  Perry's  visit. 
The  ideal  basis  of  progress  is  the  expansion  of  the  world  re- 
lations of  a  people,  the  extension  of  its  field  of  activity  and 
sphere  of  influence  far  beyond  the  limits  of  its  own  territory, 
by  which  it  exchanges  commodities  and  ideas  with  various 
countries  of  the  world.  Universal  history  shows  us  that,  as 
the  geographical  horizon  of  the  known  world  has  widened  from 
gray  antiquity  to  the  present,  societies  and  states  have  ex- 
panded their  territorial  and  economic  scope;  that  they  have 
grown  not  only  in  the  number  of  their  square  miles  and  in 
the  geographical  range  of  their  international  intercourse,  but 
in  national  efficiency,  power,  and  permanence,  and  especially 
in  that  intellectual  force  which  feeds  upon  the  nutritious  food 
of  wide  comparisons.  Every  great  movement  which  has  widened 
the  geographical  outlook  of  a  people,  such  as  the  Crusades  in 
the  Middle  Ages,  or  the  colonization  of  the  Americas,  has 
applied  an  intellectual  and  economic  stimulus.  The  ex- 
panding field  of  advancing  history  has  therefore  been  an  essen- 
tial concomitant  and  at  the  same  time  a  driving  force  in  the 
progress  of  every  people  and  of  the  world. 

Since   progress   in   civilization   involves   an   increasing   ex-  Man's 
ploitation  of  natural  advantages  and  the  development  of  closer  increasing 
relations  between  a  land  and  its  people,  it  is  an  erroneous  dependence 
idea  that  man  tends  to  emancipate  himself  more  and  more  uP°n  naturc- 
from  the  control  of  the  natural  conditions  forming  at  once 


Increase 
in  kind 
and 
amount 


the  foundation  and  environment  of  his  activities.  On  the  con- 
tr.iry,  he  multiplies  his  dependencies  upon  nature;46  but 
while  increasing  their  sum  total,  he  diminishes  the  force  of 
each.  There  lies  the  gist  of  the  matter.  As  his  bonds  become 
more  numerous,  they  become  also  more  elastic.  Civilization  has 
lengthened  his  leash  and  padded  his  collar,  so  that  it  does 
not  gall ;  but  the  leash  is  never  slipped.  The  Delaware  Indians 
depended  upon  the  forests  alone  for  fuel.  A  citizen  of  Penn- 
sylvania, occupying  the  former  Delaware  tract,  has  the  choice 
of  wood,  hard  or  soft  coal,  coke,  petroleum,  natural  gas,  or 
manufactured  gas.  Does  this  mean  emancipation?  By  no 
means.  For  while  fuel  was  a  necessity  to  the  Indian  only  for 
warmth  and  cooking,  and  incidentally  for  the  pleasureable  ex- 
citement of  burning  an  enemy  at  the  stake,  it  enters  into  the 
manufacture  of  almost  every  article  that  the  Pennsylvanian 
uses  in  his  daily  life.  His  dependence  upon  nature  has  be- 
come more  far-reaching,  though  less  conspicuous  and  es- 
pecially less  arbitrary. 

These  dependencies  increase  enormously  both  in  variety 
and  amount.  Great  Britain,  with  its  twenty  thousand  mer- 
chant ships  aggregating  over  ten  million  tons,  and  its  im- 
mense import  and  export  trade,  finds  its  harbors  vastly  more 
important  to-day  for  the  national  welfare  than  in  Cromwell's 
time,  when  they  were  used  by  a  scanty  mercantile  fleet.  Since 
the  generation  of  electricity  by  water-power  and  its  applica- 
tion to  industry,  the  plunging  falls  of  the  Scandinavian  Moun- 
tains, of  the  Alps  of  Switzerland,  France,  and  Italy,  of  the 
Southern  Appalachians  and  the  Cascade  Range,  are  geograph- 
ical features  representing  new  and  unsuspected  forms  of  na- 
tional capital,  and  therefore  new  bonds  between  land  and  peo- 
ple in  these  localities.  Russia  since  1844  has  built  35,572 
miles  (57,374  kilometers)  of  railroad  in  her  European  terri- 
tory, and  thereby  derived  a  new  benefit  from  her  level  plains, 
which  so  facilitate  the  construction  and  cheap  operation  of 
railroads,  that  they  have  become  in  this  aspect  alone  a  new 
feature  in  her  national  economy.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
galling  restrictions  of  Russia's  meager  and  strategically  con- 
fined coasts,  which  tie  her  hand  in  any  wide  maritime  policy, 
work  a  greater  hardship  to-day  than  they  did  a  hundred  years 


SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND  71 

ago,  since  her  growing  population  creates  a  more  insistent 
demand  for  international  trade.  In  contrast  to  Russia,  Nor- 
way, with  its  paucity  of  arable  soil  and  of  other  natural  re- 
sources, finds  its  long  indented  coastline  and  the  coast-bred 
seamanship  of  its  people  a  progressively  important  national 
asset.  Hence  as  ocean-carriers  the  Norwegians  have  devel- 
oped a  merchant  marine  nearly  half  as  large  again  as  that  of 
Russia  and  Finland  combined — 1,569,646  tons47  as  against 
1,084,165  tons. 

This  growing  dependence  of  a  civilized  people  upon  its  land 
is  characterized  by  intelligence  and  self-help.  Man  forms  a 
partnership  with  nature,  contributing  brains  and  labor,  while 
she  provides  the  capital  or  raw  material  in  ever  more  abundant 
and  varied  forms.  As  a  result  of  this  cooperation,  held  by  the 
terms  of  the  contract,  he  secures  a  better  living  than  the  savage 
who,  like  a  mendicant,  accepts  what  nature  is  pleased  to  dole 
out,  and  lives  under  the  tyranny  of  her  caprices. 


NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  IH 

1.  H.  J.  Mackinder,  Britain  and  the  British  Seas,  p.   196.     London, 
1904. 

2.  Gardner,  Atlas  of  English  History,  Map  29.     New  York,  1905. 

3.  Hereford  George,  Historical  Geography  of  Great  Britain,  pp.  58-60. 
London,  1904. 

4.  Lewis  Morgan,  Ancient  Society,  p.  62.     New  York,  1878. 

5.  Franklin  H.  Giddings,  Elements  of  Sociology,  p.  247.     New  York, 
1902. 

6.  Schoolcraft,  The  Indian   Tribes  of  the  United   States,  Vol.   I,  pp. 
198-200,  224.     Philadelphia,  1853. 

7.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  231-232,  241. 

8.  Koosevelt,  The  Winning  of  the  West,  Vol.  I,  pp.  70-73,  88.     New 
York,  1895. 

9.  McGee  and  Thomas,  Prehistoric  North  America,  pp.  392-393,  408, 
Vol.  XIX,  of  History  of  North  America,  edited  by  Francis  W.  Thorpe, 
Philadelphia,    1905.      Eleventh    Census   Report    on    the    Indians,    p.    51. 
Washington,  1894. 

10.  Hans  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  II,  pp.  249-250.     New 
York,  1902-1906. 

11.  Spencer  and  Gillen,  Northern  Tribes  of  Central  Australia,  pp.  13- 
15.     London,  1904. 

12.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  126.     London,  1896-1898. 

13.  Roscher,   National-Ockonomik   des   AcJcerbaues,  p.   24.     Stuttgart, 
1888. 


72  SOCIETY  AND  STATE  IN  RELATION  TO  LAND 

14.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  131.     London,  1896-1898. 

15.  Paul    Ehrenreich,    Die    Einteilung    und    Verbreitung    der    Volker- 
stamme     Brasiliens,     Peterman's     Geographische     Mitthetiungen,     Vol. 
XXXVII,  p.  85.    Gotha,  1891. 

16.  Roscher,    National-Oekonomik    des    Ackerbaues,    p.    26,    Note    5. 
Stuttgart,  1888. 

17.  Ibid.,  p.  27. 

18.  Albert    Niblack,    The    Coast    Indians    of    Southern    Alaska    and 
Northern  British  Columbia,  pp.  298-299,  304,  337-339.   Washington,  1888. 

19.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  173.    London,  1896-1898. 

20.  Ibid.,  Vol.  III.  pp.  173-174. 

21.  Sven  Hedin,  Central  Asia  and  Tibet,  Vol.  I,  p.  184.     New  York 
and  London,  1903. 

22.  John  de  Piano  Carpini,  Journey  in  1246,  p.  130.    Hakluyt  Society, 
London,   1904. 

23.  Journey  of  William  de  Rubruquis  in  1253,  p.  188.     Hakluyt  So- 
ciety, London,  1903. 

24.  Volney,  quoted  in  Malthus,  Principles  of  Population,  Chap.  VII, 
p.  60.     London,  1878. 

25.  Genesis,  Chap.  XIII,  1-12. 

26.  Herbert   Spencer,  Principles  of  Sociology,  Vol.  I,  p.   457.     New 
York. 

27.  Heinrich  von  Treitschke,  Politik,  Vol.   I,  pp.   202-204.     Leipzig, 
1897. 

28.  E.  C.  Semple,  American  History  and  Its  Geographic  Conditions, 
pp.  206-207.     Boston,  1903. 

29.  Roscher,  Grundlagen  des  National-Oekonomie,  Book  VI.    Bevolker- 
ung,  p.  694,  Note  5.     Stuttgart,  1886. 

30.  Edward  John  Payne,  History  of  the  New  World  Called  America, 
Vol.  I,  p.  303-313.     Oxford  and  New  York,  1892. 

31.  Roscher,  National-Oekonomik  des  Ackerbaues,  pp.  31,  52.     Stutt- 
gart, 1888. 

32.  Ibid.,  p.  56,  Note  5. 

33.  For    these    and    other    averages,    Sir    John    Lubbock,    Prehistoric 
Times,  pp.  593-595.     New  York,  1872. 

34.  Roscher,   National-Oekonomik   des   Ackerbaues,   pp.    79-80,   p.   81, 
Note  7.     Stuttgart,  1888.     William  I.  Thomas,  Source  Book  for  Social 
Origins,  pp.  96-112.     Chicago,  1909. 

35.  Capt.  J.  Forsyth,  The  Highlands  of  Central  India,  pp.   101-107, 
168.     London,  1889. 

36.  Tacitus,  Germania,  III. 

37.  Roscher,  National-Oekonomik  des  Ackerbaues,  p.  32,  Note  15  on  p. 
36.     Stuttgart,  1888. 

38.  E.  Huntington,  The  Pulse  of  Asia,  pp.  202,  203,  212,  213,  236-237. 
Boston,  1907. 

39.  Sheldon    Jackson,    Introduction    of    Domesticated    Reindeer    into 
Alaska,  pp.   20,  25-29,   127-129.     Washington,   1894. 

40.  Quoted  in  Alexander  von  Humboldt,  Aspects  of  Nature  in  Different 
Lands,  pp.  62,  139.     Philadelphia,  1849. 

41.  Edward  John  Payne,  History  of  the  New  World  Called  America, 
Vol.  I,  pp.  311-321,  333-354,  364-366.     New  York,  1892. 

42.  Prescott,  Conquest  of  Peru,  Vol.  I,  p.  47.     New  York,  1848. 


43.  McGee  and  Thomas,  Prehistoric  North  America,  Vol.  XIX,  pp.  151- 
161,  of  The  History  of  North  America,  edited  by  Francis  W.  Thorpe, 
Philadelphia,  1905. 

44.  Eatzel,  Anthropo-geographie,  Vol.  II,  pp.  264-265. 

45.  Malthus,  Principles  of  Population,  Chapters  V  and  VII.     London, 
1878. 

46.  Nathaniel  Shaler,  Nature  and  Man  in  America,  pp.  147-151.     W. 
Z.  Eipley,  Eaces  of  Europe,  Chap.  I,  New  York,  1899. 

47.  Justus   Perthea,    Taschen- Atlaa,   pp.   44,   47.     Gotba,   1910. 


CHAPTER  IV 


Universal- 
ity of 

these  move- 
ments. 


Stratifi- 
cation of 
races. 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  IN  THEIR  GEO- 
GRAPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE 

THE  ethnic  and  political  boundaries  of  Europe  to-day  are 
the  residuum  of  countless  racial,  national,  tribal  and  individual 
movements  reaching  back  into  an  unrecorded  past.  The  very 
names  of  Turkey,  Bulgaria,  England,  Scotland  and  France 
are  borrowed  from  intruding  peoples.  New  England,  New 
France,  New  Scotland  or  Nova  Scotia  and  many  more  on  the 
American  continents  register  the  Trans-Atlantic  nativity  of 
their  first  white  settlers.  The  provinces  of  Galicia  in  Spain, 
Lombardy  in  Italy,  Brittany  in  France,  Essex  and  Sussex  in 
England  record  in  their  names  streams  of  humanity  diverted 
from  the  great  currents  of  the  Volkerwanderung.  The  Ro- 
mance group  of  languages,  from  Portugal  to  Roumania,  tes- 
tify to  the  sweep  of  expanding  Rome,  just  as  the  wide  dis- 
tribution of  the  Aryan  linguistic  family  points  to  many  roads 
and  long  migrations  from  some  unplaced  birthplace.  Names 
like  Cis-Alpine  and  Trans-Alpine  Gaul  in  the  Roman  Empire, 
Trans-Caucasia,  Trans-Caspia  and  Trans-Baikalia  in  the  Rus- 
sian Empire,  the  Transvaal  and  Transkei  in  South  Africa, 
indicate  the  direction  whence  the  advancing  people  have  come. 

Ethnology  reveals  an  east  and  west  stratification  of  lin- 
guistic groups  in  Europe,  a  north  and  south  stratification  of 
races,  and  another  stratification  by  altitude,  which  reappears 
in  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  shows  certain  invading  dominant 
races  occupying  the  lowlands  and  other  displaced  ones  the 
highlands.  This  definite  arrangement  points  to  successive 
arrivals,  a  crowding  forward,  an  intrusion  of  the  strong  into 
fertile,  accessible  valleys  and  plains,  and  a  dislodgment  of  the 
weak  into  the  rough  but  safe  keeping  of  mountain  range  or 
barren  peninsula,  where  they  are  brought  to  bay.  Ethnic 
fragments,  linguistic  survivals,  or  merely  place  names,  dropped 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  75 

like  discarded  baggage  along  the  march  of  a  retreating  army, 
bear  witness  everywhere  to  tragic  recessionals. 

Every  country  whose  history  we  examine  proves  the  re-  The 
cipient   of  successive   streams   of   humanity.      Even   sea-girt  name 

England   has    received   various    intruding   peoples    from   the      s  onca 

4.   •    a          e  £       •  T     Movement. 

Ivoman  occupation  to  the  recent  influx  or  Jtvussian  Jews.     In 

prehistoric  times  it  combined  several  elements  in  its  population, 
as  the  discovery  of  the  "long  barrow"  men  and  "round  bar- 
row" men  by  archaeologists,  and  the  identification  of  a  surviv- 
ing Iberian  or  Mediterranean  strain  by  ethnologists  go  to 
prove.1  Egypt,  Mesopotamia,  and  India  tell  the  same  story, 
whether  in  their  recorded  or  unrecorded  history.  Tropical 
Africa  lacks  a  history ;  but  all  that  has  been  pieced  together 
by  ethnologists  and  anthropologists,  in  an  effort  to  reconstruct 
its  past,  shows  incessant  movement, — growth,  expansion  and 
short-lived  conquest,  followed  by  shrinkage,  expulsion  or  ab- 
sorption by  another  invader.2  To  this  constant  shifting  of 
races  and  peoples  the  name  of  historical  movement  has  been 
given,  because  it  underlies  most  of  written  history,  and  consti- 
tutes the  major  part  of  unwritten  history,  especially  that  of 
savage  and  nomadic  tribes.  Two  things  are  vital  in  the  history 
of  every  people,  its  ethnic  composition  and  the  wars  it  wages  in 
defense  or  extension  of  its  boundaries.  Both  rest  upon  his- 
torical movements, — intrusions,  whether  peaceful  or  hostile, 
into  its  own  land,  and  encroachments  upon  neighboring  terri- 
tory necessitated  by  growth.  Back  of  all  such  movements  is 
natural  increase  of  population  beyond  local  means  of  subsist- 
ence, and  the  development  of  the  war  spirit  in  the  effort  to 
secure  more  abundant  subsistence  either  by  raid  or  conquest 
of  territory. 

Among    primitive    peoples    this    movement    is    simple    and  Evolution 
monotonous.     It  involves  all  members  of  the  tribe,  either  in  of  &* 

pursuit  of  game,  or  following  the  herd  over  the  tribal  territory,  Histonca* 

.  ,    ,    .  J    Movement, 

or   in    migrations    seeking   more    and    better   land.      Among 

civilized  peoples  it  assumes  various  forms,  and  especially  is 
differentiated  for  different  members  of  the  social  group.  The 
civilized  state  develops  specialized  frontiersmen,  armies,  ex- 
plorers, maritime  traders,  colonists,  and  missionaries,  who 
keep  a  part  of  the  people  constantly  moving  and  directing 


76 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 


Nature  of 

primitive 
movements. 


external  expansion,  while  the  mass  of  the  population  coir.  ( 
the  force  once  expended  in  the  migrant  food-quest  into  in- 
ternal activity.  Here  we  come  upon  a  paradox.  The  nation 
as  a  whole,  with  the  development  of  sedentary  life,  increases  its 
population  and  therewith  its  need  for  external  movements ;  it 
widens  its  national  area  and  its  circle  of  contact  with  other 
lands,  enlarges  its  geographical  horizon,  and  improves  its 
internal  communication  over  a  growing  territory ;  it  evolves 
a  greater  mobility  within  and  without,  which  attaches,  how- 
ever, to  certain  classes  of  society,  not  to  the  entire  social 
group.  This  mobility  becomes  the  outward  expression  of  a 
whole  complex  of  economic  wants,  intellectual  needs,  and 
political  ambitions.  It  is  embodied  in  the  conquests  which 
build  up  empires,  in  the  colonization  which  develops  new 
lands,  in  the  world-wide  exchange  of  commodities  and  ideas 
which  lifts  the  level  of  civilization,  till  this  movement  of  peo- 
ples becomes  a  fundamental  fact  of  history. 

This  movement  is  and  has  been  universal  and  varied.  When 
most  unobtrusive  in  its  operation,  it  has  produced  its  greatest 
effects.  To  seize  upon  a  few  conspicuous  migrations,  like  the 
Volkerwanderung  and  the  irruption  of  the  Turks  into  Europe, 
made  dramatic  by  their  relation  to  the  declining  empires  of 
Rome  and  Constantinople,  and  to  ignore  the  vast  sum  of 
lesser  but  more  normal  movements  which  by  slow  increments 
produce  greater  and  more  lasting  results,  leads  to  wrong  con- 
clusions both  in  ethnology  and  history.  Here,  as  in  geology, 
great  effects  do  not  necessarily  presuppose  vast  forces,  but 
rather  the  steady  operation  of  small  ones.  It  is  often  assumed 
that  the  world  was  peopled  by  a  series  of  migrations ;  whereas 
everything  indicates  that  humanity  spread  over  the  earth 
little  by  little,  much  as  the  imported  gypsy  moth  is  gradu- 
ally occupying  New  England  or  the  water  hyacinth  the  rivers 
of  Florida.  Louis  Agassiz  observed  in  1853  that  "the  bounda- 
ries within  which  the  different  natural  combinations  of  animals 
are  known  to  be  circumscribed  upon  the  surface  of  the  earth, 
coincide  with  the  natural  range  of  distinct  types  of  man."3 
The  close  parallelism  between  Australian  race  and  flora,  Es- 
kimo race  and  Arctic  fauna,  points  to  a  similar  manner  of 
dispersion.  Wallace,  in  describing  how  the  Russian  frontier 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  77 

of  settlement  slowly  creeps  forward  along  the  Volga,  encroach- 
ing upon  the  Finnish  and  Tartar  areas,  and  permeating  them 
with  Slav  blood  and  civilization,  adds  that  this  is  probably  the 
normal  method  of  expansion.4  Thucydides  describes  the  same 
process  of  encroachment,  displacement,  and  migration  in 
ancient  Hellas.5  Strabo  quotes  Posidonius  as  saying  that  the 
emigration  of  the  Cimbrians  and  other  kindred  tribes  from 
their  native  seats  was  gradual  and  by  no  means  sudden.8 
The  traditions  of  the  Delaware  Indians  show  their  advance 
from  their  early  home  in  central  Canada  southward  to  the 
Delaware  River  and  Chesapeake  Bay  to  have  been  a  slow  zig- 
zag movement,  interrupted  by  frequent  long  halts,  leaving 
behind  one  laggard  group  here  and  sending  out  an  offshoot 
there,  who  formed  new  tribes  and  thereby  diversified  the 
stock.7  It  was  an  aimless  wandering,  without  destination  and 
purpose  other  than  to  find  a  pleasanter  habitat.  The  Vandals 
appear  first  as  "a  loose  aggregation  of  restless  tribes  who  must 
not  be  too  definitely  assigned  to  any  precise  district  on  the 
map,"  somewhere  in  central  or  eastern  Prussia.8  Far-reaching 
migrations  aiming  at  a  distant  goal,  like  the  Gothic  and 
Hunnish  conquests  of  Italy,  demand  both  a  geographical 
knowledge  and  an  organization  too  high  for  primitive  peoples, 
and  therefore  belong  to  a  later  period  of  development.9 

The  long  list  of  recorded  migrations  has  been  supple-  Number 
mented  by  the  researches  of  ethnologists,  which  have  revealed  and 
a  multitude  of  prehistoric  movements.  These  are  disclosed  in  ran£e- 
greater  number  and  range  with  successive  investigation. 
The  prehistoric  wanderings  of  the  Polynesians  assume  far 
more  significance  to-day  than  a  hundred  years  ago,  when 
their  scope  was  supposed  to  have  its  western  limit  at  Fiji  and 
the  Ellice  group.  They  have  now  been  traced  to  almost  every 
island  of  Melanesia ;  vestiges  of  their  influence  have  been 
detected  in  the  languages  of  Australia,  and  the  culture  of  the 
distant  coasts  of  Alaska  and  British  Columbia.  The  west- 
ern pioneers  of  America  knew  the  Shoshone  Indians  as  small 
bands  of  savages,  constantly  moving  about  in  search  of  food 
in  the  barren  region  west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  occa- 
sionally venturing  eastward  to  hunt  buffalo  on  the  plains.  Re- 
cent investigation  has  identified  as  offshoots  of  this  retarded 


78  THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 

Shoshonean  stock  the  sedentary  agriculturalists  of  the  Moqui 
Pueblo,  and  the  advanced  populations  of  ancient  Mexico  and 
Central  America.10     Here  was  a  great  human  current  which 
through  the  centuries  slowly  drifted  from  the  present  frontier 
of  Canada  to  the  shores  of  Lake  Nicaragua.  Powell's  map  of 
the  distribution  of  the  linguistic  stocks  of  American  Indians 
is  intelligible  only  in  the  light  of  constant  mobility.    Haebler's 
map  of  the  South  American  stocks  reveals  the  same  restless 
past.     This  cartographical  presentation  of  the  facts,  giving 
only  the  final  results,  suggests  tribal  excursions  of  the  nature 
of  migrations ;  but  ethnologists  see  them  as  the  sum  total  of 
countless  small  movements  which  are  more  or  less  part  of  the 
jiormal  activity  of  an  unrooted  savage  people.  [Map  page  101 .] 
Otis  Mason  finds  that  the  life  of  a  social  group  involves 
a  variety  of  movements  characterized  by  different  ranges  or 
scopes.      I.  The   daily    round   from   bed   to   bed.      II.  The 
annual  round  from  year  to  year,  like  that  of  the  Tunguse 
Orochon  of  Siberia  who  in  pursuit  of  various  fish  and  game 
change  their  residence  within  their  territory  from  month  to 
month,  or  the  pastoral  nomads  who  move  with  the  seasons  from 
pasture  to  pasture.     III.  Less  systematic  outside  movements 
covering  the  tribal  sphere  of  influence,  such  as  journeys  or 
voyages   to   remote  hunting  or   fishing   grounds,   forays   or 
piratical  descents  upon  neighboring  lands  eventuating  usually 
in  conquest,  expansion  into  border  regions  for  occasional  oc- 
cupation or  colonization.     IV.   Participation  in   streams  of 
barter  or  commerce.     V.  And  at  a  higher  stage  in  the  great 
currents  of  human  intercourse,  experience,  and  ideas,  which 
finally  compass  the  world.11     In  all  this  series  the  narrower 
movement  prepares  for  the  broader,  of  which  it  constitutes  at 
once  an  impulse  and  a  part. 
Importance          The  real  character  and  importance  of  these  movements  have 

been   appreciated  by   broad-minded  historians.      Thucydides 
movements  . 

in  history.       elucidates  the  conditions  leading  up  to  the  Peloponnesian  War 

by  a  description  of  the  semi-migratory  population  of  Hellas, 
the  exposure  of  the  more  fertile  districts  to  incursions,  and 
the  influence  of  these  movements  in  differentiating  Dorian  from 
Ionian  Greece.12  Johannes  von  Muller,  in  the  introduction 
to  his  history  of  Switzerland,  assigns  to  federations  and  rnigra- 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  79 

tions  a  conspicuous  role  in  historical  development.  Edward 
A.  Ross  sees  in  such  movements  a  thorough-going  selective 
process  which  weeds  out  the  unfit,  or  rather  spares  only  the 
highly  fit.  He  lays  down  the  principle  that  repeated  migra- 
tions tend  to  the  creation  of  energetic  races  of  men.  He  adds, 
"This  principle  may  account  for  the  fact  that  those  branches 
of  a  race  achieve  the  most  brilliant  success  which  have  wan- 
dered the  farthest  from  their  ancestral  home.  .  .  .  The  Arabs 
and  Moors  that  skirted  Africa  and  won  a  home  in  far-away 
Spain,  developed  the  most  brilliant  of  the  Saracen  civilizations. 
Hebrews,  Dorians,  Quirites,  Rajputs,  Hovas  were  far  invaders 
No  communities  in  classic  times  flourished  like  the  cities  of 
Asia  created  by  the  overflow  from  Greece.  Nowhere  under  the 
Czar  are  there  such  vigorous,  progressive  communities  as  in 
Siberia.13  Brinton  distinguishes  the  associative  and  disper- 
sive elements  in  ethnography.  The  latter  is  favored  by  the 
physical  adaptability  of  the  human  race  to  all  climates  and 
external  conditions  ;  it  is  stimulated  by  the  food-quest,  the 
pressure  of  foes,  and  the  resultant  restlessness  of  an  unstable 
primitive  society.14 

The  earth's  surface  is  at  once  factor  and  basis  in  these 
movements.  In  an  active  way  it  directs  them  ;  but  they  in  turn 
clothe  the  passive  earth  with  a  mantle  of  humanity.  This 
mantle  is  of  varied  weave  and  thickness,  showing  here  the 
simple  pattern  of  a  primitive  society,  there  the  intricate  design 
of  advanced  civilization  ;  here  a  closely  woven  or  a  gauzy 
texture,  there  disclosing  a  great  rent  where  a  rocky  peak  or  the 
ice-wrapped  poles  protrude  through  the  warm  human  covering. 
This  is  the  magic  web  whereof  man  is  at  once  woof  and  weaver, 
and  the  flying  shuttle  that  never  rests.  Given  a  region,  what 
is  its  living  envelope,  asks  anthropo-geography.  Whence  and 
how  did  it  get  there?  What  is  the  material  of  warp  and  woof? 
Will  new  threads  enter  to  vary  the  color  and  design?  If 
so,  from  what  source?  Or  will  the  local  pattern  repeat  itself 
over  and  over  with  dull  uniformity  ?  Geographi- 

It  was  the  great  intellectual  service  of  Copernicus  that  he  Cl 

•t     P  <-,     pretation 

conceived  of  a  world  in  motion  instead  of  a  world  at  rest.     So 


anthropo-geography  must  see  its  world  in  motion,  whether  it  cal  move- 
is  considering  English  colonization,  or  the  westward  expansion  ment. 


80  THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 

of  the  Southern  slave  power  in  search  of  unexhausted  land,  or 
the  counter  expansion  of  the  free-soil  movement,  or  the  early 
advance  of  the  trappers  westward  to  the  Rockies  after  the 
retreating  game,  or  the  withdrawal  thither  of  the  declining 
Indian  tribes  before  the  protruding  line  of  white  settlement,  and 
their  ultimate  confinement  to  ever  shrinking  reservations.  In 
studying  increase  of  population,  it  sees  in  Switzerland  chalet 
and  farm  creeping  higher  up  the  Alp,  as  the  lapping  of  a  rising 
tide  of  humanity  below;  it  sees  movement  in  the  projection  of 
a  new  dike  in  Holland  to  reclaim  from  the  sea  the  land  for 
another  thousand  inhabitants,  movement  in  Japan's  doubling 
of  its  territory  by  conquest,  in  order  to  house  and  feed  its 
redundant  millions. 

The  whole  complex  relation  of  unresting  man  to  the  earth 
is  the  subject  matter  of  anthropo-geography.  The  science 
traces  his  movements  on  the  earth's  surface,  measures  their 
velocity,  range,  and  recurrence,  determines  their  nature  by 
the  way  they  utilize  the  land,  notes  their  transformation 
at  different  stages  of  economic  development  and  under  dif- 
ferent environments.  Just  as  an  understanding  of  animal  and 
plant  geography  requires  a  previous  knowledge  of  the  various 
means  of  dispersal,  active  and  passive,  possessed  by  these  lower 
forms  of  life,  so  anthropo-geography  must  start  with  a  study 
of  the  movements  of  mankind. 

Mobility  First  of  all  is  to  be  noted  an  evolution  in  the  mobility  of 

•imitive  peopies<  jn  the  lower  stages  of  culture  mobility  is  great. 
It  is  favored  by  the  persistent  food-quest  over  wide  areas 
incident)  toiretarded-economic  methods,  and  by  the  loose  attach- 
ment of  society  to  the  soil.  The  small  social  groups  peculiar 
to  these  stages  and  their  innate  tendency  to  fission  help  the 
movements  to  ramify.  The  consequent  scattered  distribution 
of  the  population  offers  wide  interstices  between  encampments 
or  villages,  and  into  these  vacant  spaces  other  wandering  tribes 
easily  penetrate.  The  rapid  decline  of  the  Indian  race  in 
America  before  the  advancing  whites  was  due  chiefly  to  the 
division  of  the  savages  into  small  groups,  scattered  sparsely 
over  a  wide  territory.  Hunter  and  pastoral  peoples  need  far 
more  land  than  they  can  occupy  at  any  one  time.  Hence  the 
temporarily  vacant  spots  invite  incursion.  Moreover,  the 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  81 

slight  impedimenta  carried  by  primitive  folk  minimize  the 
natural  physical  obstacles  which  they  meet  when  on  the  march. 
The  lightly  equipped  war  parties  of  the  Shawnee  Indians  used 
gorges  and  gaps  for  the  passage  of  the  Allegheny  Mountains 
which  were  prohibitive  to  all  white  pioneers  except  the  lonely 
trapper.  Finally,  this  mobility  gets  into  the  primitive  mind. 
The  Wanderlust  is  strong.  Long  residence  in  one  territory  is 
irksome,  attachment  is  weak.  Therefore  a  small  cause  suffices 
to  start  the  whole  or  part  of  the  social  body  moving.  A  tem- 
porary failure  of  the  food  supply,  cruelty  or  excessive  exac- 
tion of  tribute  on  the  part  of  the  chief,  occasions  an  exodus. 
The  history  of  every  negro  tribe  in  Africa  gives  instances  of 
such  secessions,  which  often  leave  whole  districts  empty  and 
exposed  to  the  next  wandering  occupant.  Methods  of  pre- 
venting such  withdrawals,  and  therewith  the  diminution  of  his 
treasury  receipts  and  his  righting  force,  belong  to  the  policy 
of  every  negro  chieftain. 

The  checks  to  this  native  mobility  of  primitive  peoples  are  Natural 
two:  physical  and  mental.  In  addition  to  the  usual  barriers  barriers  to 
of  mountains,  deserts,  and  seas  before  the  invention  of  boats,  movement~ 
primeval  forests  have  always  offered  serious  obstacles  to  man 
armed  only  with  stone  or  bronze  axe,  and  they  rebuffed  even 
man  of  the  iron  age.  War  and  hunting  parties  had  to  move 
along  the  natural  clearings  of  the  rivers,  the  tracks  of  animals, 
or  the  few  trails  beaten  out  in  time  by  the  natives  themselves. 
Primitive  agriculture  has  never  battled  successfully  against 
the  phalanx  of  the  trees.  Forests  balked  the  expansion  of  the 
Inca  civilization  on  the  rainy  slope  of  the  Andes,  and  in  Cen- 
tral Africa  the  negro  invaded  only  their  edges  for  his  yam 
fields  and  plantain  groves.  The  earliest  settlements  in  ancient 
Britain  were  confined  to  the  natural  clearings  of  the  chalk 
downs  and  oolitic  uplands;  and  here  population  was  chiefly 
concentrated  even  at  the  close  of  the  Roman  occupation.  Only 
gradually,  as  the  valley  woodlands  were  cleared,  did  the  richer 
soil  of  the  alluvial  basins  attract  men  from  the  high,  poor 
ground  where  tillage  required  no  preliminary  work.  But  after 
four  centuries  of  Roman  rule  and  Roman  roads,  the  clearings 
along  the  river  valleys  were  still  mere  strips  of  culture  mid  an 
encompassing  wilderness  of  woods.  When  the  Germanic  in- 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 


Effect  of 
geographi- 
cal horizon. 


Civiliza- 
tion and 
mobility. 


vaders  came,  they  too  appropriated  the  treeless  downs  and  were 
blocked  by  the  forests.15  On  the  other  hand,  grasslands  and 
savannahs  have  developed  the  most  mobile  people  whom  we 
know,  steppe  hunters  like  the  Sioux  Indians  and  Patagonians. 
Thus  while  the  forest  dweller,  confined  to  the  highway  of  the 
stream,  devised  only  canoe  and  dugout  boat  in  various  forms 
for  purposes  of  transportation,  steppe  peoples  of  the  Old 
World  introduced  the  use  of  draft  and  pack  animals,  and  in- 
vented the  sledge  and  cart. 

Primitive  peoples  carry  a  drag  upon  their  migrations  in 
their  restricted  geographical  outlook;  ignorance  robs  them 
of  definite  goals.  The  evolution  of  the  historical  movement 
is  accelerated  by  every  expansion  of  the  geographical  horizon. 
It  progresses  most  rapidly  where  the  knowledge  of  outlying 
or  remote  lands  travels  fastest,  as  along  rivers  and  thalassic 
coasts.  Rome's  location  as  toll-gate  keeper  of  the  Tiber  gave 
her  knowledge  of  the  upstream  country  and  directed  her  con- 
quest of  its  valley;  and  the  movement  thus  started  gathered 
momentum  as  it  advanced.  Caesar's  occupation  of  Gaul  meant 
to  his  generation  simply  the  command  of  the  roads  leading 
from  the  Mediterranean  to  the  northern  sources  of  tin  and 
amber,  and  the  establishment  of  frontier  outposts  to  protect 
the  land  boundaries  of  Italy ;  this  represented  a  bold  policy 
of  inland  expansion  for  that  day.  The  modern  historian  sees 
in  that  step  the  momentous  advance  of  history  beyond  the 
narrow  limits  of  the  Mediterranean  basin,  and  its  gradual 
inclusion  of  all  the  Atlantic  countries  of  Europe,  through 
whose  maritime  enterprise  the  historical  horizon  was  stretched 
to  include  America.  In  the  same  way,  mediaeval  trade 
with  the  Orient,  which  had  familiarized  Europe  with  distant 
India  and  Cathay,  developed  its  full  historico-geographical 
importance  when  it  started  the  maritime  discoveries  of  the 
fifteenth  century.  The  expansion  of  the  geographical  horizon 
in  1512  to  embrace  the  earth  inaugurated  a  widespread  his- 
torical movement,  which  has  resulted  in  the  Europeanization 
of  the  world. 

Civilized  man  is  at  once  more  and  less  mobile  than  his  primi- 
tive brother.  Every  advance  in  civilization  multiplies  and 
tightens  the  bonds  uniting  him  with  his  soil;  makes  him  a 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  83 

sedentary  instead  of  a  migratory  being.  On  the  other  hand 
every  advance  in  civilization  is  attended  by  the  rapid  clear- 
ing of  the  forests,  by  the  construction  of  bridges  and  inter- 
lacing roads,  the  invention  of  more  effective  vehicles  for  trans- 
portation whereby  intercourse  increases,  and  the  improvement 
of  navigation  to  the  same  end.  Civilized  man  progressively 
modifies  the  land  which  he  occupies,  removes  or  reduces  ob- 
stacles to  intercourse,  and  thereby  approximates  it  to  the 
open  plain.  Thus  far  he  facilitates  movements.  But  while 
doing  this  he  also  places  upon  the  land  a  dense  population, 
closely  attached  to  the  soil,  strong  to  resist  incursion,  and  for 
economic  reasons  inhospitable  to  any  marked  accession  of 
population  from  without.  Herein  lies  the  great  difference 
between  migration  in  empty  or  sparsely  inhabited  regions,  such 
as  predominated  when  the  world  was  young,  and  in  the  densely 
populated  countries  of  our  era.  As  the  earth  grew  old  and 
humanity  multiplied,  peoples  themselves  became  the  greatest 
barriers  to  any  massive  migrations,  till  in  certain  countries 
of  Europe  and  Asia  the  historical  movement  has  been  reduced 
to  a  continual  pressure,  resulting  in  compression  of  population 
here,  repression  there.  Hence,  though  political  boundaries 
may  shift,  ethnic  boundaries  scarcely  budge.  The  greatest 
wars  of  modern  Europe  have  hardly  left  a  trace  upon  the 
distribution  of  its  peoples.  Only  in  the  Balkan  Peninsula,  as 
the  frontiers  of  the  Turkish  Empire  have  been  forced  back 
from  the  Danube,  the  alien  Turks  have  withdrawn  to  the 
shrinking  territory  of  the  Sultan  and  especially  to  Asia 
Minor. 

Where  a  population  too  great  to  be  dislodged  occupies  the  Diffusion 
land,  conquest  results  in  the  eventual  absorption  of  the  victors  °* 
and  their  civilization  by  the  native  folk,  as  happened  to  the  culture- 
Lombards  in  Italy,  the  Vandals  in  Africa  and  the  Normans  in 
England.    Where  the  invaders  are  markedly  superior  in  culture 
though  numerically  weak,  conquest  results  in  the  gradual  per- 
meation of  the  conquered  with  the  religion,  economic  methods, 
language,  and  customs  of  the  new-comers.18     The  latter  pro- 
cess, too,  is  always  attended  by  some  intermixture  of  blood, 
where  no  race  repulsion  exists,  but  this  is  small  in  comparison 
to  the  diffusion  of  civilization.    This  was  the  method  by  which 


84  THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 

Greek  traders  and  colonists  Hellenized  the  countries  about  the 
eastern  Mediterranean,  and  spread  their  culture  far  back  from 
the  shores  which  their  settlements  had  appropriated.  In  this 
way  Saracen  armies  soon  after  the  death  of  Mohammed 
Arabized  the  whole  eastern  and  southern  sides  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean from  Syria  to  Spain,  and  Arab  merchants  set  the  stump 
of  their  language  and  religion  on  the  coasts  of  East  Africa  as 
far  as  Mozambique.  The  handful  of  Spanish  adventurers 
who  came  upon  the  relatively  dense  populations  of  Mexico 
and  Peru  left  among  them  a  civilization  essentially  Eurujn  an, 
but  only  a  thin  strain  of  Castilian  blood.  Thus  the  immigra- 
tion of  small  bands  of  people  sufficed  to  influence  the  cultuiv 
of  that  big  territory  known  as  Latin  America. 
Ethnic  That  vast  sum  of  migrations,  great  and  small,  which  we 

intermix-  group  under  the  general  term  of  historical  movement  has  in- 
volved  an  endless  mingling  of  races  and  cultures.  As  Professor 
Petrie  has  remarked,  the  prevalent  notion  that  in  prehistoric 
times  races  were  pure  and  unmixed  is  without  foundation.  An 
examination  of  the  various  forms  of  the  historical  movement 
reveals  the  extent  and  complexity  of  this  mingling  process. 
In  the  first  place,  no  migration  is  ever  simple;  it  involves 
a  number  of  secondary  movements,  each  of  which  in  turn 
occasions  a  new  combination  of  tribal  or  racial  elements.  The 
transference  of  a  whole  people  from  its  native  or  adopted 
seat  to  a  new  habitat,  as  in  the  Vdlkem'anderungcn,  empties 
the  original  district,  which  then  becomes  a  catchment  basin 
for  various  streams  of  people  about  its  rim;  and  in  the  new 
territory  it  dislodges  a  few  or  all  of  the  occupants,  and 
thereby  starts  up  a  fresh  movement  as  the  original  one  conies 
to  rest. 

Nor  is  this  all.  A  torrent  that  issues  from  its  source  in  the 
mountains  is  not  the  river  which  reaches  the  sea.  On  its  long 
journey  from  highland  to  lowland  it  receives  now  the  milky 
waters  of  a  glacier-fed  stream,  now  a  muddy  tributary  from 
agricultural  lands,  now  the  clear  waters  from  a  limestone 
plateau,  while  all  the  time  its  racing  current  bears  a  burden 
of  soil  torn  from  its  own  banks.  Now  it  rests  in  a  lake,  where 
it  lays  down  its  weight  of  silt,  then  goes  on,  perhaps  across 
an  arid  stretch  where  its  water  is  sucked  up  by  the  thirsty  air 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  85 

or  diverted  to  irrigate  fields  of  grain.  So  with  those  rivers  of 
men  which  we  call  migrations.  The  ethnic  stream  may  start 
comparatively  pure,  but  it  becomes  mixed  on  the  way.  From 
time  to  time  it  leaves  behind  laggard  elements  which  in  turn 
make  a  new  racial  blend  where  they  stop.  Such  were  the  six 
thousand  Aduatici  whom  Caesar  found  in  Belgian  Gaul.  These 
were  a  detachment  of  the  migrating  Cimbri,  left  there  in 
charge  of  surplus  cattle  and  baggage  while  the  main  body  went 
on  to  Italy.17 

A  migration  rarely  involves  a  single  people  even  at  the  Complex 
start.  It  becomes  contagious  either  by  example  or  by  the  currents 
subjection  of  several  neighboring  tribes  to  the  same  impelling  °  **. 
force,  by  reason  of  which  all  start  at  or  near  the  same  time. 
We  find  the  Cimbri  and  Teutons  combined  with  Celts  from  the 
island  of  Batavia18  in  the  first  Germanic  invasion  of  the  Roman 
Empire.  Jutes,  Saxons  and  Angles  started  in  close  succession 
for  Britain,  and  the  Saxon  group  included  Frisians.19  An 
unavoidable  concomitant  of  great  migrations,  especially 
those  of  nomads,  is  their  tendency  to  sweep  into  the  vortex 
of  their  movement  any  people  whom  they  brush  on  the  way. 
Both  individuals  and  tribes  are  thus  caught  up  by  the  current 
The  general  convergence  of  the  central  German  tribes  towards 
the  Danube  frontier  of  the  Roman  Empire  during  the  Mar- 
comannic  War  drew  in  its  train  the  Lombards  from  the  lower 
Elbe  down  to  the  middle  Danube  and  Theiss.20  The  force  of 
the  Lombards  invading  Italy  in  568  included  twenty  thousand 
Saxons  from  Swabia,  Gepidae  from  the  middle  Danube,  Bul- 
garians, Slavs  from  the  Russian  Ukraine,  together  with  vari- 
ous tribes  from  the  Alpine  district  of  Noricum  and  the  fluvial 
plains  of  Pannonia.  Two  centuries  later  the  names  of  these 
non-Lombard  tribes  still  survived  in  certain  villages  of  Italy 
which  had  formed  their  centers.21  The  army  which  Attila 
the  Hun  brought  into  Gaul  was  a  motley  crowd,  comprising 
peoples  of  probable  Slav  origin  from  the  Russian  steppes, 
Teutonic  Ostrogoths  and  Gepidae,  and  numerous  German 
tribes,  besides  the  Huns  themselves.  When  this  horde  with- 
drew after  the  death  of  Attila,  Gepidae  and  Ostrogoths  settled 
along  the  middle  Danube,  and  the  Slavonic  contingent  along 
the  Alpine  courses  of  the  Drave  and  Save  Rivers.22  The 


86 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 


Cultural 
modification 
during 
migration. 


Vandal  migration  which  in  409  invaded  Spain  included  the 
Turanian  Alans  and  the  German  Suevi.  The  Alans  found  a 
temporary  home  in  Portugal,  which  they  later  abandoned  to 
join  the  Vandal  invasion  of  North  Africa,  while  the  Suevi  set- 
tled permanently  in  the  northwestern  mountains  of  Spain. 
The  Vandals  occupied  in  Spain  two  widely  separated  districts, 
one  in  the  mountain  region  of  Galicia  next  to  the  Suevi,  and 
the  other  in  the  fertile  valley  of  Andalusia  in  the  south,  while 
the  northeastern  part  of  the  peninsula  was  occupied  by  in- 
truding Visigoths.23  Add  to  these  the  original  Iberian  and 
Celtic  stocks  of  the  peninsula  and  the  Roman  strain  previously 
introduced,  and  the  various  elements  which  have  entered  into 
the  Spanish  people  become  apparent.24 

The  absorption  of  foreign  elements  is  not  confined  to 
large  groups  whose  names  come  down  in  history,  nor  is  the 
ensuing  modification  one  of  blood  alone.  Every  land  migra- 
tion or  expansion  of  a  people  passes  by  or  through  the 
territories  of  other  peoples;  by  these  it  is  inevitably 
influenced  in  point  of  civilization,  and  from  them  individuals 
are  absorbed  into  the  wandering  throng  by  marriage  or  adop- 
tion, or  a  score  of  ways.  This  assimilation  of  blood  and  local 
culture  is  facilitated  by  the  fact  that  the  vast  majority  of 
historical  movements  are  slow,  a  leisurely  drift.  Even  the 
great  Volkerwandcrung,  which  history  has  shown  us  generally 
in  the  moment  of  swift,  final  descent  upon  the  imperial  city, 
in  reality  consisted  of  a  succession  of  advances  with  long 
halts  between.  The  Vandals,  whose  original  seats  were  prob- 
ably in  central  or  eastern  Prussia,  drifted  southward  with 
the  general  movement  of  the  German  barbarians  toward  the 
borders  of  the  Empire  late  in  the  second  century,  and,  after 
the  Marcomannic  War  (175  A.  D.),  settled  in  Dacia  north  of 
the  lower  Danube  under  the  Roman  sway-  In  271  they  were 
located  on  the  middle  Danube,  and  sixty  years  afterwards  in 
Moravia.  Later  they  settled  for  seventy  years  in  Pannonia 
within  the  Empire,  where  they  assimilated  Roman  civilization 
and  adopted  the  Arlan  form  of  Christianity  from  their  Gothic 
neighbors.25  In  Spain,  as  we  have  seen,  they  occupied  Galicia 
and  Andalusia  for  a  time  before  passing  over  into  Africa  in 
429.  Here  was  a  migration  lasting  two  centuries  and  a  half, 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  87 

reaching  from  the  Baltic  to  the  southern  shores  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean, starting  on  the  bleak  sterile  plains  of  the  north 
amid  barbarous  neighbors,  ending  in  the  sunny  grain  fields 
and  rich  cities  of  Roman  Africa.  The  picture  which  we  get 
of  the  victorious  Vandals  parceling  out  the  estates  of  Roman 
nobles,  and,  from  the  standpoint  of  their  more  liberal  faith, 
profiting  by  the  dissensions  of  the  two  Catholic  sects  of 
Africa,  shows  us  a  people  greatly  modified  by  their  long 
sweep  through  the  civilized  outskirts  of  the  Empire.  So  ft 
was  with  the  Lombards  and  Goths  who  invaded  Italy. 

Among  primitive  tribes,  who  move  in  smaller  groups  and 
must  conform  closely  to  the  dictates  of  their  environment, 
the  modifying  effects  of  people  and  land  through  which  they 
pass  are  conspicuous.  Ratzel  describes  the  gradual  with- 
drawal of  a  Hottentot  people  from  western  Cape  Colony  far 
into  the  arid  interior  before  the  advance  of  Kaffirs  and 
Europeans  by  saying:  "The  stock  and  name  of  the  Namaquas 
wandered  northward,  acquiring  new  elements,  and  in  course 
of  time  filling  the  old  mold  with  new  contents."2  This 
is  the  typical  result  of  such  primitive  movements.  The 
migration  of  the  Delaware  Indians  from  an  early  home 
somewhere  northwest  of  the  Great  Lakes  to  their  his- 
torical habitat  between  the  Hudson  and  Potomac  Rivers  was 
a  slow  progress,  which  somewhere  brought  them  into  contact 
with  maize-growing  tribes,  and  gave  them  their  start  in  agri- 
culture.27 The  transit  lands  through  which  these  great  race 
journeys  pass  exercise  a  modifying  effect  chiefly  through  thetr 
culture  and  their  peoples,  less  through  their  physical  features 
and  climate.  For  that  the  stay  of  the  visitants  is  generally 
too  brief. 

Even  early  maritime  migrants  did  not  keep  their  strains  Effect  of 
pure.    The  untried  navigator  sailing  from  island  to  headland,  early 

hugging  the  coast  and  putting  ashore  for  water,  came  into  n 

•  .  migration, 

contact  with  the  natives.     Cross  currents  of  migration  can  be 

traced  in  Polynesian  waters,  where  certain  islands  are  nodal 
points  which  have  given  and  received  of  races  and  culture 
through  centuries  of  movement.  The  original  white  popula- 
tion of  Urugua}T  differed  widely  from  that  of  the  other  Span- 
ish republics  of  South  America.  Its  nucleus  was  a  large 


88 


The 

transit 

land. 


War  as  a 
form  of 
the  his- 
torical 
movement. 


immigration  of  Canary  Islanders.  These  were  descendants 
of  Spaniards  and  the  native  Guanches  of  the  Canaries,  mingled 
also  with  Norman,  Flemish  and  Moorish  blood.28  The  Norse 
on  their  way  to  Iceland  may  have  picked  up  a  Celtic  element 
in  the  islands  north  of  Scotland ;  but  from  the  Faroe  group 
onward  they  found  only  empty  Iceland  and  Greenland.  This 
was  an  exceptional  experience.  Early  navigation,  owing  to 
its  limitations,  purposely  restricted  itself  to  the  known.  Men 
voyaged  where  men  had  voyaged  before  and  were  to  be  found. 
Journeys  into  the  untenanted  parts  of  the  world  were  rare. 
However,  the  probable  eastward  expansion  of  the  Eskimo 
along  the  Arctic  rim  of  North  America  belongs  in  this  class, 
so  that  this  northern  folk  has  suffered  no  modification  from 
contact  with  others,  except  where  Alaska  approaches  Asia. 

The  land  traversed  by  a  migrating  horde  is  not  to  be  pic- 
tured as  a  dead  road  beneath  their  feet,  but  rather  as  a  wide 
region  of  transit  and  transition,  potent  to  influence  them  by 
its  geography  and  people,  and  to  modify  them  in  the  course 
of  their  passage.  The  route  which  they  follow  is  a  succession 
of  habitats,  in  which  they  linger  and  domicile  themselves  for 
a  while,  though  not  long  enough  to  lose  wholly  the  habits  of 
Itfe  and  thought  acquired  in  their  previous  dwelling  place. 
Although  nature  in  many  places,  by  means  of  valleys,  low 
plains,  mountain  passes  or  oasis  lines,  points  out  the  way  of 
these  race  movements,  it  is  safer  to  think  and  speak  of  this 
way  as  a  transit  land,  not  as  a  path  or  road.  Even  where 
the  district  of  migration  has  been  the  sea,  as  among  the  Caribs 
of  the  Antilles  Islands,  the  Moros  of  the  Philippines,  and  the 
Polynesians  of  the  Pacific,  man  sends  his  roots  like  a  water 
plant  down  into  the  restless  element  beneath,  and  reflects 
its  influence  in  all  his  thought  and  activities. 

Every  aggressive  historical  movement,  whether  bold  migra- 
tion or  forcible  extension  of  the  home  territory,  involves 
displacement  or  passive  movement  of  other  peoples  (except 
in  those  rare  occupations  of  vacant  lands),  who  in  turn  are 
forced  to  encroach  upon  the  lands  of  others.  These  conditions 
involve  war,  which  is  an  important  form  of  the  historical 
movement,  contributing  to  new  social  contacts  and  fusion 
of  racial  stocks. 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  89 

Raids  and  piratical  descents  are  often  the  preliminary  of 
great  historical  movements.  They  first  expand  the  geograph- 
ical horizon,  and  end  in  permanent  settlements,  which  involve 
finally  considerable  transfers  of  population,  summoned  to 
strengthen  the  position  of  the  interloper.  Such  was  the 
history  of  the  Germanic  invasions  of  Britain,  the  Scandi- 
navian settlements  on  the  shores  of  Iceland,  Britain,  and 
France,  and  the  incursions  of  Saharan  tribes  into  the  Sudanese 
states.  Among  pastoral  nomads  war  is  the  rule;  the  tribe,  a 
mobilized  nation,  is  always  on  a  war  footing  with  its  neigh- 
bors. The  scant  supply  of  wells  and  pasturage,  inadequate  in 
the  dry  season,  involves  rivalry  and  conflict  for  their  possession 
as  agricultural  lands  do  not.  Failure  of  water  or  grass  is 
followed  by  the  decline  of  the  herds,  and  then  by  marauding 
expeditions  into  the  river  valleys  to  supply  the  temporary 
want  of  food.  When  population  increases  beyond  the  limits 
of  subsistence  in  the  needy  steppes,  such  raids  become  the  rule 
and  end  in  the  conquest  of  the  more  favored  lands,  with 
resulting  amalgamation  of  race  and  culture.29 

The  wars  of  savage  and  pastoral  peoples  affect  the  whole  Primitive 
tribe.  All  the  able-bodied  men  are  combatants,  and  all  the  war* 
women  and  children  constitute  the  spoils  of  war  in  case  of 
defeat.  This  fact  is  important,  since  the  purpose  of  primitive 
conflicts  is  to  enslave  and  pillage,  rather  than  to  acquire  land. 
The  result  is  that  a  whole  district  may  be  laid  waste,  but 
when  the  devastators  withdraw,  it  is  gradually  repopulated  by 
bordering  tribes,  who  make  new  ethnic  combinations.  After 
the  destruction  of  the  Eries  by  the  Iroquois  in  1655,  Ohio  was 
left  practically  uninhabited  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years. 
Then  the  Iroquoian  Wyandots  extended  their  settlements  into 
northwestern  Ohio  from  their  base  in  southern  Michigan,  while 
the  Miami  Confederacy  along  the  southern  shore  of  Lake 
Michigan  pushed  their  borders  into  the  western  part.  The 
Muskingum  Valley  in  the  eastern  portion  was  occupied  about 
1750  by  Delawares  from  eastern  Pennsylvania,  the  Scioto  by 
Shawnees,  and  the  northeast  corner  of  the  territory  by  detach- 
ments of  Iroquois,  chiefly  Senecas.30  The  long  wars  between 
the  Algonquin  Indians  of  the  north  and  the  Appalachian  tribes 
of  the  south  kept  the  district  of  Kentucky  a  No  Man's  Land, 


90 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 


Slavery 
as  form  of 
historical 
movement 


in  convenient  vacancy  for  occupation  by  the  white  settlers, 
when  they  began  the  westward  movement.31  [Map  page  156.] 

This  desolation  is  produced  partly  by  killing,  but  chiefly 
by  enslavement  of  prisoners  and  the  flight  of  the  conquered. 
Both  constitute  compulsory  migrations  of  far-reaching  effect 
in  the  fusion  of  races  and  the  blending  of  civilizations.  The 
thousands  of  Greek  slaves  who  were  brought  to  ancient  Rome 
contributed  to  its  refinement  and  polish.  All  the  nations  of 
the  known  world,  from  Briton  to  Syrian  and  Jew,  were  repre- 
sented in  the  slave  markets  of  the  imperial  capital,  and  con- 
tributed their  elements  to  the  final  composition  of  the  Roman 
people.  When  we  read  of  ninety-seven  thousand  Hebrews 
whom  Titus  sold  into  bondage  after  the  fall  of  Jerusalem, 
of  forty  thousand  Greeks  sold  by  Lucullus  after  one  victory, 
and  the  auction  sub  corona  of  whole  tribes  in  Gaul  by  Caesar, 
the  scale  of  this  forcible  transfer  becomes  apparent,  and  its 
power  as  an  agent  of  race  amalgamation.  Senator  Sam 
Houston  of  Texas,  speaking  of  the  Comanche  Indians,  in  the 
United  States  Senate,  December  31,  1854,  said:  "There  are 
not  less  than  two  thousand  prisoners  (whites)  in  the  hands  of 
the  Comanches,  four  hundred  in  one  band  in  my  own  state  .  .  . 
They  take  no  prisoners  but  women  and  boys."3  It  was  cus- 
tomary among  the  Indians  to  use  captured  women  as  concu- 
bines and  to  adopt  into  the  tribe  such  boys  as  survived  the 
cruel  treatment  to  which  they  were  subjected.  Since  the 
Comanches  in  1847  were  variously  estimated  to  number  from 
nine  to  twelve  thousand,33  so  large  a  proportion  of  captives 
would  modify  the  native  stock. 

In  Africa  slavery  has  been  intimately  associated  with  agri- 
culture as  a  source  of  wealth,  and  therefore  has  lent  motive 
to  intertribal  wars.  Captives  were  enslaved  and  then  gradu- 
ally absorbed  into  the  tribe  of  their  masters.  Thus  war  and 
slavery  contributed  greatly  to  that  widespread  blending  of 
races  which  characterizes  negro  Africa.  Slaves  became  a 
medium  of  exchange  and  an  article  of  commerce  with  other 
continents.  The  negro  slave  trade  had  its  chief  importance 
in  the  eyes  of  ethnologists  and  historians  because,  in  dis- 
tributing the  black  races  in  white  continents,  it  has  given  a 
"negro  question"  to  the  United  States,  superseded  the  native 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  91 

Indian  stock  of  the  Antilles  by  negroes,  and  left  a  broad  negro 
strain  in  the  blood  of  Colombia,  Venezuela,  and  Brazil.  This 
particular  historical  movement,  which  during  the  two  cen- 
turies of  its  greatest  activity  involved  larger  numbers  than 
the  Tartar  invasion  of  Russia  or  the  Turkish  invasion  of 
Europe,  for  a  long  period  gave  to  black  Africa  the  only 
historical  importance  which  it  possessed  for  the  rest  of  the 
world.34 

In  higher  stages  of  political  development,  war  aiming  Fusion  by 
at  the  subjugation  of  large  territories  finds  another  means  deporta 
to  fuse  the  subject  peoples  and  assimilate  them  to  a  common 
standard  of  civilization.  The  purpose  is  unification  and  the  colonies. 
obliteration  of  local  differences.  These  are  also  the  uncon- 
scious ends  of  evolution  by  historical  movement.  With  this 
object,  conquerors  the  world  over  have  used  a  system  of  tribal 
and  racial  exchanges.  It  was  the  policy  of  the  Incas  of  an- 
cient Peru  to  remove  conquered  tribes  to  distant  parts  of 
the  realm,  and  supply  their  places  with  colonists  from  other 
districts  who  had  long  been  subjected  and  were  more  or  less 
assimilated.35  In  722  B.  C.  the  Assyrian  king,  Sargon,  over- 
ran Samaria,  carried  away  the  Ten  Tribes  of  Israel  beyond 
the  Tigris  and  scattered  them  among  the  cities  of  Media,  where 
they  probably  merged  with  the  local  population.  To  the 
country  left  vacant  by  their  wholesale  deportation  he  trans- 
planted people  from  Babylon  and  other  Mesopotamian  cities.39 
The  descendants  of  these,  mingled  with  the  poorer  class  of 
Jews  still  left  there,  formed  the  despised  Samaritans  of  the 
time  of  Christ.  The  Kingdom  of  Judah  later  was  despoiled 
by  Nebuchadnezzar  of  much  of  its  population,  which  was 
carried  off  to  Babylon. 

This  plan  of  partial  deportation  and  colonization  charac- 
terized the  Roman  method  of  Romanization.  Removal  of  the 
conquered  from  their  native  environment  facilitated  the  pro- 
cess, while  it  weakened  the  spirit  and  power  of  revolt.  The 
Romans* met  bitter  opposition  from  the  mountain  tribes  when 
trying  to  open  up  the  northern  passes  of  the  Apennines.  Con- 
sequently they  removed  the  Ligurian  tribe  of  the  Apuanians, 
forty-seven  thousand  in  number,  far  south  to  Samnium. 
When  in  15  B.  C.  the  region  of  the  Rhaetian  Alps  was  joined 


92  THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 

to  the  Empire,  forty  thousand  of  the  inhabitants  were  trans- 
planted from  the  mountains  to  the  plain.  The  same  method 
was  used  with  the  Scordisci  and  Dacians  of  the  Danube.  More 
often  the  mortality  of  war  so  thinned  the  population,  that  the 
settlement  of  Roman  military  colonies  among  them  sufficed  to 
keep  down  revolt  and  to  Romanize  the  surviving  fragment. 
The  large  area  of  Romance  speech  found  in  Roumania  and 
eastern  Hungary,  despite  the  controversy  about  its  origin,37 
seems  to  have  had  its  chief  source  in  the  extensive  Roman 
colonies  planted  by  the  Emperor  Trajan  in  conquered  Dacia.38 
In  Iberian  Spain,  which  bitterly  resisted  Romanization,  the 
process  was  facilitated  by  the  presence  of  large  garrisons  of 
soldiers.  Between  196  and  169  B.  C.  the  troops  amounted  to 
one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand,  and  many  of  them  remained 
in  the  country  as  colonists.39  Compare  the  settlement  of 
*  Scotch  troops  in  French  Canada  by  land  grants  after  1763, 
resulting  in  the  survival  to-day  of  sandy  hair,  blue  eyes,  and 
highland  names  among  the  French-speaking  habitants  of  Mur- 
ray Bay  and  other  districts.  The  Turks  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury brought  large  bodies  of  Moslem  converts  from  Asia  Minor 
to  garrison  Macedonia  and  Thessaly,  thereby  robbing  the 
Anatolian  Plateau  of  half  its  original  population.  Into  the 
vacuum  thus  formed  a  current  of  nomads  from  inner  Asia  has 
poured  ever  since.40 

Withdrawal  Every  active  historical  movement  which  enters  an  already 
and  flight.  populated  country  gives  rise  there  to  passive  movements, 
either  compression  of  the  native  folk  followed  by  amalgama- 
tion, or  displacement  and  withdrawal.  The  latter  in  some 
degree  attends  every  territorial  encroachment.  Only  where 
there  is  an  abundance  of  free  land  can  a  people  retire  as  a  whole 
before  the  onslaught,  and  maintain  their  national  or  racial 
solidarity.  Thus  the  Slavs  seem  largely  to  have  withdrawn  be- 
fore the  Germans  in  the  Baltic  plains  of  Europe.  The  Indians 
of  North  and  South  America  retired  westward  before  the  ad- 
vance of  the  whites  from  the  Atlantic  coast.  The  Cherokee 
nation,  who  once  had  a  broad  belt  of  country  extending  from 
the  Tennessee  Valley  through  South  Carolina  to  the  ocean,41 
first  retracted  their  frontier  to  the  Appalachian  Mountains; 
in  1816  they  were  confined  to  an  ever  shrinking  territory  on 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  93 

the  middle  Tennessee  and  the  southern  end  of  the  highlands ; 
in  1818  they  began  to  retire  beyond  the  Mississippi,  and  in 
1828  beyond  the  western  boundary  of  Arkansas.42  The  story 
of  the  Shawnees  and  Delawares  is  a  replica  of  this.43  In  the 
same  way  Hottentots  and  Kaffirs  in  South  Africa  are  with- 
drawing northward  and  westward  into  the  desert  before  the 
protruding  frontier  of  white  settlement,  as  the  Boers  before  the 
English  treked  farther  into  the  veldt.  [See  map  page  105.] 

Where  the  people  attacked  or  displaced  is  small  or  a  broken 
remnant,  it  often  takes  refuge  among  a  neighboring  or  kindred 
tribe.  The  small  Siouan  tribes  of  the  Carolinas,  reduced  to 
fragments  by  repeated  Iroquois  raids,  combined  with  their 
Siouan  kinsmen  the  Catawbas,  who  consequently  in  1743  in- 
cluded twenty  dialects  among  their  little  band.44  The  Iro- 
quoian  Tuscaroras  of  North  Carolina,  defeated  and  weakened 
by  the  whites  in  1711,  fled  north  to  the  Iroquois  of  New  York, 
where  they  formed  the  Sixth  Nation  of  the  Confederation. 
The  Yamese  Indians,  who  shifted  back  and  forth  between  the 
borders  of  Florida  and  South  Carolina,  defeated  first  by  the 
whites  and  then  by  the  Creeks,  found  a  refuge  for  the  rem- 
nant of  their  tribe  among  the  Seminoles,  in  whom  they  merged 
and  disappeared  as  a  distinct  tribe45 — the  fate  of  most  of 
these  fragmentary  peoples.  [See  map  page  54.] 

When  the  fugitive  body  is  large,  it  is  forced  to  split  up  Dispersal 
in  order  to  escape.  Hence  every  fugitive  movement  tends  to  in  flight, 
assume  the  character  of  a  dispersal,  all  the  more  as  organiza- 
tion and  leadership  vanish  in  the  catastrophe.  The  fis- 
sile character  of  primitive  societies  especially  contributes  to 
this  end,  so  that  almost  every  story  of  Indian  and  native 
African  warfare  tells  of  shattered  remnants  fleeing  in  sev- 
eral directions.  Among  civilized  peoples,  the  dispersal  is  that 
of  individuals  and  has  far-reaching  historical  effects.  After 
the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  the  Jews  were  scattered  over 
the  earth,  the  debris  of  a  nation.  The  religious  wars  of 
France  during  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  caused 
Huguenots  to  flee  to  Switzerland,  Germany,  Holland,  Eng- 
land, and  South  Carolina ;  they  even  tried  to  establish  a  colony 
on  the  coast  of  Brazil.  Everywhere  they  contributed  a  val- 
uable element  to  the  economic  and  social  life  of  the  community 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 


Natural 
regions  of 
retreat. 


which  they  joined.  The  great  schism  in  the  Russian  Church 
became  an  agent  of  emigration  and  colonization.  It  helped 
to  spread  the  Russian  nationality  over  remote  frontier  regions 
of  the  empire  which  previously  had  been  almost  exclusively 
Asiatic;  and  distributed  groups  of  dissenters  in  the  neighbor- 
ing provinces  of  Turkey,  Roumania,  Austria,  Poland  and 
Prussia.46 

The  hope  of  safety  from  pursuit  drives  fugitive  peoples 
into  isolated  and  barren  places  that  are  scarcely  accessible  or 
habitable,  and  thereby  extends  the  inhabited  area  of  the  earth 
long  before  mere  pressure  of  population  would  have  stretched 
it  to  such  limits.  We  find  these  refugee  folk  living  in  pile 
villages  built  over  the  water,  in  deserts,  in  swamps,  mangrove 
thickets,  very  high  mountains,  marshy  deltas,  and  remote  or 
barren  islands,  all  which  can  be  classified  as  regions  of  re- 
treat. Fugitives  try  to  place  between  themselves  and  their 
pursuers  a  barrier  of  sea  or  desert  or  mountains,  and  in  doing 
this  have  themselves  surmounted  some  of  the  greatest  obstacles 
to  the  spread  of  the  human  race. 

Districts  of  refuge  located  centrally  to  several  natural  re- 
gions of  migration  receive  immigrants  from  many  sides,  and 
are  therefore  often  characterized  by  a  bizarre  grouping  of 
populations.  The  cluster  of  marshy  islands  at  the  head  of 
the  Adriatic  received  fugitives  from  a  long  semi-circle  of 
north  Italian  cities  during  the  barbarian  invasions.  Each 
refugee  colony  occupied  a  separate  island,  and  finally  all 
coalesced  to  form  the  city  of  Venice.  Central  mountain  districts 
like  the  Alps  and  Caucasus  contain  "the  sweepings  of  the 
plains."  The  Caucasus  particularly,  on  the  border  between 
Europe  and  Asia,  contains  every  physical  type  and  repre- 
sentative of  every  linguistic  family  of  Eurasia,  except  pure 
Aryan.  Nowhere  else  in  the  world  probably  is  there  such  a 
heterogeneous  lot  of  peoples,  languages  and  religions.  Ripley 
calls  the  Caucasus  "a  grave  of  peoples,  of  languages,  of 
customs  and  physical  types."47  Its  base,  north  and  south, 
and  the  longitudinal  groove  through  its  center  from  east  to 
west  have  been  swept  by  various  racial  currents,  which  have 
cast  up  their  flotsam  into  its  valleys.  The  pueblos  of  our 
arid  Southwest,  essentially  an  area  of  asylum,  are  inhabited 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  95 

by  Indians  of  four  distinct  stocks,  and  only  one  of  them,  the 
Moquis,  show  clearly  kinship  to  another  tribe  outside  this  ter- 
ritory,48 so  that  they  are  survivals.  The  twenty-eight  dif- 
ferent Indian  stocks  huddled  together  in  small  and  diverse  lin- 
guistic groups  between  the  Pacific  Ocean  and  the  eastern  slope 
of  the  Sierra  Nevada  and  Cascade  Range49  leave  the  impression 
that  these  protected  valleys,  similar  to  the  Caucasus  in  their 
ethnic  diversity,  were  an  asylum  for  remnants  of  de- 
pleted stocks  who  had  fled  to  the  western  highlands  before 
the  great  Indian  migrations  of  the  interior.50  Making  their 
way  painfully  and  at  great  cost  of  life  through  a  region  of 
mountain  and  desert,  they  came  out  in  diminished  bands  to 
survive  in  the  protection  of  the  great  barrier.  Of  the  twenty- 
one  Indian  linguistic  stocks  which  have  become  extinct  since 
the  arrival  of  the  white  man,  fifteen  belong  to  this  trans- 
montane  strip  of  the  Pacific  slope51 — evidence  of  the  frag- 
mentary character  of  these  stocks  and  their  consequently  small 
power  of  resistance.  [See  map  page  54.] 

Advance  to  a  completely  sedentary  life,  as  we  see  it  among  Emigra- 
modern  civilized  nations,  prohibits  the  migration  of  whole  ^on  and 
peoples,  or  even  of  large  groups  when  maintaining  their  politi-  c. 
cal  organization.  On  the  other  hand,  however,  sedentary  life 
and  advanced  civilization  bring  rapid  increase  of  population, 
improved  methods  of  communication,  and  an  enlarged  geo- 
graphical horizon.  These  conditions  encourage  and  facilitate 
emigration  and  colonization,  forms  of  historical  movement 
which  have  characterized  the  great  commercial  peoples  of  an- 
tiquity and  the  overcrowded  nations  of  modern  times.  These 
forms  do  not  involve  a  whole  people,  but  only  individuals  and 
small  groups,  though  in  time  the  total  result  may  represent 
a  considerable  proportion  of  the  original  population.  The 
United  States  in  1890  contained  980,938  immigrants  from 
Canada  and  Newfoundland,52  or  just  one-fifth  the  total  popu- 
lation of  the  Dominion  in  that  same  year.  Germany  since 
1820  has  contributed  at  least  five  million  citizens  to  non- 
European  lands.  Ireland  since  1841  has  seen  nearly  four  mil- 
lions of  its  inhabitants  drawn  off  to  other  countries,53  an 
amount  only  little  less  than  its  present  population.  It  is 
estimated  that  since  1851  emigration  has  carried  off  from 


coloniza- 


96  THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 

County  Clare  and  Kerry  seventy-two  per  cent,  of  the  average 
population ;  and  yet  those  counties  are  still  crowded.54  Among 
those  who  abandon  their  homes  in  search  of  easier  conditions 
of  living,  certain  ages  and  certain  social  and  industrial  classes 
predominate.  A  typical  emigrant  group  to  America  repre- 
sents largely  the  lower  walks  of  life,  includes  an  abnormal 
proportion  of  men  and  adults,  and  about  three-fourths  of 
it  are  unskilled  laborers  and  agriculturists.55 

Colonization,  the  most  potent  instrument  of  organized  ex- 
pansion, has  in  recent  centuries  changed  the  relative  signifi- 
cance of  the  great  colonial  nations  of  Europe.  It  raised  Eng- 
land from  a  small  insular  country  to  the  center  of  a  world 
power.  It  gave  sudden  though  temporary  preeminence 
to  Spain  and  Portugal,  a  new  lease  of  life  to  little  Holland, 
and  ominous  importance  to  Russia.  Germany,  who  entered  the 
colonial  field  only  in  1880,  found  little  desirable  land  left ; 
and  yet  it  was  especially  Gennany  who  needed  an  outlet 
for  her  redundant  population.  With  all  these  states,  as  \\iih 
ancient  Phoenicia,  Greece  and  Yemen,  the  initial  purpose 
was  commerce  or  in  some  form  the  exploitation  of  the  new 
territory.  Colonies  were  originally  trading  stations  estab- 
lished as  safe  termini  for  trade  routes.50  Colonial  government, 
as  administered  by  the  mother  country,  originally  had  an  eye 
single  for  the  profits  of  trade:  witness  the  experience  of  the 
Thirteen  Colonies  with  Great  Britain.  Colonial  wars  have 
largely  meant  the  rivalry  of  competing  nations  seeking  the 
same  markets,  as  the  history  of  the  Portuguese  and  Dutch  in 
the  East  Indies,  and  the  English  and  French  in  America  prove. 
The  first  Punic  War  had  a  like  commercial  origin — rivalry  for 
the  trade  of  Magna  Grcecia  between  Rome  and  Carthage,  the 
dominant  colonial  powers  of  the  western  Mediterranean.  Such 
wars  result  in  expansion  for  the  victor. 

Commerce.  Commerce,  which  so  largely  underlies  colonization,  is  itself 
a  form  of  historical  movement.  It  both  causes  and  stimulates 
great  movements  of  peoples,  yet  it  differs  from  these  funda- 
mentally in  its  relation  to  the  land.  Commerce  traverses  the 
land  to  reach  its  destination,  but  takes  account  of  natural 
features  only  as  these  affect  transportation  and  travel.  It 
has  to  do  with  systems  of  routes  and  goals,  which  it  aims  to 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  97 

reach  as  quickly  as  possible.  It  reduces  its  cortege  to  essen- 
tials ;  eliminates  women  and  children.  Therefore  it  surmounts 
natural  barriers  which  block  the  advance  of  other  forms  of 
the  historical  movement.  Merchant  caravans  are  constantly 
crossing  the  desert,  but  not  so  peoples.  Traders  with  loaded 
yaks  or  ponies  push  across  the  Karakorum  Mountains  by 
passes  where  a  migrating  horde  would  starve  and  freeze.  The 
northern  limit  of  the  Mediterranean  race  in  Spain  lies  sharply 
defined  along  the  crest  of  the  Pyrenees,  whose  long  unbroken 
wall  forms  one  of  the  most  pronounced  boundaries  in  Europe  ;57 
yet  traders  and  smugglers  have  pushed  their  way  through  from 
time  immemorial.  Long  after  Etruscan  merchants  had  crossed 
northward  over  the  Alps,  Roman  expansion  and  colonization 
made  a  detour  around  the  mountains  westward  into  Gaul,  with 
the  result  that  the  Germans  received  Roman  civilization  not 
straight  from  the  south,  but  secondhand  through  their  Gallic 
neighbors  west  of  the  Rhine. 

Commerce,  though   differing   from   other  historical  move-  Commerce 
ments,  may   give  to  these  direction   and   destination.      The a  S1"?6 

trader  is  frequently  the  herald  of  soldier  and  settler.     He 

.  .  .  movements, 

becomes  their  guide,  takes  them   along   the   trail   which  he 

has  blazed,  and  gives  them  his  own  definiteness  of  aim.  The 
earliest  Roman  conquest  of  the  Alpine  tribes  was  made  for  the 
purpose  of  opening  the  passes  for  traders  and  abolishing  the 
heavy  transit  duties  imposed  by  the  mountaineers.58  Fur- 
traders  inaugurated  French  expansion  to  the  far  west  of  Can- 
ada, and  the  Russian  advance  into  Siberia.  The  ancient 
amber  route  across  Russia  from  the  Baltic  to  the  Euxine 
probably  guided  the  Goths  in  their  migration  from  their 
northern  seats  to  the  fertile  lands  in  southern  Russia,  where 
they  first  appear  in  history  as  the  Ostrogoths.59  The  caravan 
trade  across  the  Sahara  from  the  Niger  to  the  Mediterranean 
coast  has  itself  embodied  an  historical  movement,  by  bring- 
ing out  enough  negro  slaves  appreciably  to  modify  the  ethnic 
composition  of  the  population  in  many  parts  of  North 
Africa.60  It  was  this  trade  which  also  suggested  to  Prince 
Henry  of  Portugal  in  1415,  when  campaigning  in  Morocco, 
the  plan  of  reaching  the  Guinea  Coast  by  sea  and  diverting 
its  gold  dust  and  slaves  to  the  port  of  Lisbon,  a  movement 


98  THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 

which    resulted    in     the    Portuguese     circumnavigation     of 
Africa.61 

Every  staple  place  and  trading  station  is  a  center  of  geo- 
graphical information ;  it  therefore  gives  an  impulse  to  ex- 
pansion by  widening  the  geographical  horizon.  The  Lewis  and 
Clark  Expedition  found  the  Mandan  villages  at  the  northern 
bend  of  the  Missouri  River  the  center  of  a  trade  which  ex- 
tended west  to  the  Pacific,  through  the  agency  of  the  Crow  and 
Paunch  Indians  of  the  upper  Yellowstone,  and  far  north  to 
the  Assiniboine  and  Saskatchewan  Rivers.  Here  in  conversa- 
tion with  British  and  French  fur-traders  of  the  Northwest 
Company's  posts,  they  secured  information  about  the  western 
country  they  were  to  explore.02  Similarly  the  trade  of  the 
early  Jesuit  missions  at  La  Pointe  near  the  west  end  of  Lake 
Superior  annually  drew  the  Indians  from  a  wide  circle  sweep- 
ing from  Green  Bay  and  the  Fox  River  in  the  south,  across 
the  Mississippi  around  to  the  Lake  of  the  Woods  and  far 
north  of  Lake  Superior.63  Here  Marquette  first  heard  of  the 
great  river  destined  to  carry  French  dominion  to  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico. 

Movements          Trade  often  finds  in  religion  an  associate  and  coadjutor 
due  to  in     directing     and     stimulating    the     historical     movement, 

religion.  China  regards  modern  Christian  missions  as  effective  Euro- 
pean agencies  for  the  spread  of  commercial  and  political 
power.  Jesuit  and  fur-trader  plunged  together  into  the  wilds 
of  colonial  Canada;  Spanish  priest  and  gold-seeker,  into  Mex- 
ico and  Peru.  American  missionary  pressed  close  upon  the 
heels  of  fur-trader  into  the  Oregon  country.  Jason  Lee, 
having  established  a  Methodist  mission  on  the  Willamette  in 
1834,  himself  experienced  sudden  conversion  from  religionist 
to  colonizer.  He  undertook  a  temporary  mission  back  to  the 
settled  States,  where  he  preached  a  stirring  propaganda  for 
the  settlement  and  appropriation  of  the  disputed  Oregon 
country,  before  the  British  should  fasten  their  grip  upon  it. 
The  United  States  owes  Hawaii  to  the  expansionist  spirit  of 
American  missionaries.  Thirty  years  after  their  arrival  in 
the  islands,  they  held  all  the  important  offices  under  the  native 
government,  and  had  secured  valuable  tracts  of  lands,  laying 
the  foundation  of  the  landed  aristocracy  of  planters  estab- 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  99 

lished  there  to-day.  Their  sons  and  grandsons  took  the  lead 
in  the  Revolution  of  1893,  and  in  the  movement  for  annex- 
ation to  the  United  States.  Thus  sometimes  do  the  meek 
inherit  the  earth. 

The  famous  pilgrimages  of  the  world,  in  which  the  commer-  Religious 
cial  element  has  been  more  or  less  conspicuous,64  have  con-  pilgrim- 
tributed  greatly  to  the  circulation  of  peoples  and  ideas,  es-  ages' 
pecially  as  they  involve  multitudes  and  draw  from  a  large 
circle  of  lands.  Their  economic,  intellectual  and  political 
effects  rank  them  as  one  phase  of  the  historical  movement. 
Herodotus  tells  of  seven  hundred  thousand  Egyptians  flock- 
ing to  the  city  of  Bubastis  from  all  parts  of  Egypt  for  the 
festival  of  Diana. Gr'  The  worship  of  Ashtoreth  in  Bambyce 
in  Syria  drew  votaries  from  all  the  Semitic  peoples  except  the 
Jews.  As  early  as  386  A.  D.  Christian  pilgrims  flocked  to 
Jerusalem  from  Armenia,  Persia,  India,  Ethiopia,  and  even 
from  Gaul  and  Britain.  Jerusalem  gave  rise  to  those  armed 
pilgrimages,  the  Crusades,  with  all  their  far-reaching  results. 
The  pilgrimages  to  Rome,  which  in  the  Jubilee  of  1300 
brought  two  hundred  thousand  worshipers  to  the  sacred  city, 
did  much  to  consolidate  papal  supremacy  over  Latin  Christen- 
dom.06 As  the  roads  to  Rome  took  the  pious  wayfarers 
through  Milan,  Venice,  Genoa,  Florence,  Bologna,  and  other 
great  cities  of  Italy,  they  were  so  many  channels  for  the  dis- 
tribution of  Italian  art  and  culture  over  the  more  untutored 
lands  of  western  Europe. 

Though  Mecca  is  visited  annually  by  only  seventy  or  eighty 
thousand  pilgrims,  it  puts  into  motion  a  far  greater  number 
over  the  whole  Mohammedan  world,  from  westernmost  Africa  to 
Chinese  Turkestan.67  Yearly  a  great  pilgrimage,  numbering 
in  1905  eighty  thousand  souls,  moves  across  Africa  eastward 
through  the  Sudan  on  its  way  to  the  Red  Sea  and  Mecca. 
Many  traders  join  the  caravans  of  the  devout  both  for  pro- 
tection and  profit,  and  the  devout  themselves  travel  with  herds 
of  cattle  to  trade  in  on  the  way.  The  merchants  are  prone  to 
drop  out  and  settle  in  any  attractive  country,  and  few  get 
beyond  the  populous  markets  of  Wadai.  The  British  and 
French  governments  in  the  Sudan  aid  and  protect  these  pil- 
grimages ;  they  recognize  them  as  a  political  force,  because 


100 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 


Historical 
movement 
and  race 
distribu- 
tion. 


Migrations 
in  relation 
to  zones 
and  heat 


they  spread  the  story  of  the  security  and  order  of  Euro- 
pean rule.GS  The  markets  of  western  Tibet,  recently  opened  to 
Indian  merchants  by  the  British  expedition  to  Lhassa,  pro- 
mote intercourse  between  the  two  countries  especially  be- 
cause of  the  sacred  lakes  and  mountains  in  their  vicinity, 
whicli  are  goals  of  pilgrimage  alike  to  Hindu  and  Tibetan 
Buddhist.  They  offer  an  opportunity  to  acquire  merit  and 
profit  at  the  same  time,  an  irresistible  combination  to  the 
needy,  pious  Hindu.  Therefore  across  the  rugged  passes  of 
the  Himalayas  he  drives  his  yaks  laden  with  English  merchan- 
dise, an  unconscious  instrument  for  the  spread  of  English 
influence,  English  civilization  and  the  extension  of  the  Eng- 
lish market,  as  the  Colonial  Office  well  understands.69 

The  forms  which  have  been  assumed  by  the  historical  move- 
ment are  varied,  but  all  have  contributed  to  the  spread  of  man 
over  the  habitable  globe.  The  yellow,  white  and  red 
races  have  become  adapted  to  every  zone;  the  black  race, 
whether  in  Africa,  Australia  or  Melanesia,  is  confined  chiefly 
to  the  Tropics.  A  like  conservatism  as  to  habitat  tends  to 
characterize  all  sub-races,  peoples,  and  tribes  of  the  human 
family.  The  fact  which  strikes  one  in  studying  the  migrations 
of  these  smaller  groups  is  their  adherence  each  to  a  certain 
zone  or  heat  belt  defined  by  certain  isothermal  lines  (see  map 
chap.  XVII.),  their  reluctance  to  protrude  beyond  its  limits, 
and  the  restricted  range  and  small  numerical  strength  of  such 
protrusions  as  occur.  This  seems  to  be  the  conservatism  of 
the  mature  race  type,  which  has  lost  some  of  its  plasticity  and 
shuns  or  succumbs  to  the  ordeal  of  adaptation  to  contrasted 
climatic  conditions,  except  when  civilization  enables  it  par- 
tially to  neutralize  their  effects. 

In  South  America,  Caribs  and  Arawaks  showed  a  strictly 
tropical  distribution  from  Hayti  to  the  southern  watershed 
of  the  Amazon.  The  Tupis,  moving  down  the  Parana-La 
Plata  system,  made  a  short  excursion  beyond  the  Tropic  of 
Capricorn,  though  not  beyond  the  hot  belt,  then  turned 
equator-ward  again  along  the  coast.70  In  North  America  we 
find  some  exceptions  to  the  rule.  For  instance,  though  the 
main  area  of  the  Athapascan  stock  is  found  in  the  frigid  belt 
of  Canada  and  Alaska,  north  of  the  annual  isotherm  of  0°  C. 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  101 


Arrows  show  direction  of  race  movements 
Chacos  Pat. 
Tupis 

Caribs r*^-=^ 

Civilized. . . 
Arawak .... 
Tapujos. . . 


PRIMITIVE  INDIAN  STOCKS  or  SOUTH  AMERICA 


(From  Helmolt's  History  of  the  World.     By  permission  of  Dodd, 
Mead  &  Co.) 


102 

(32°  F.)  small  residual  fragments  of  these  people  are  scat- 
tered also  along  the  Pacific  coast  of  Oregon  and  California, 
marking  the  old  line  of  march  of  a  large  group  which  drifted 
southward  into  Arizona,  New  Mexico,  Texas  and  the  northern 
part  of  Mexico.  The  Shoshone  stock,  which  originally  oc- 
cupied the  Great  Basin  and  western  intermontane  plateau  up 
to  the  borders  of  Canada,  sent  out  offshoots  which  developed 
into  the  ancient  civilized  tribes  of  tropical  Mexico  and  Central 
America.  Both  these  emigrations  to  more  southern  zones  were 
part  of  the  great  southward  trend  characterizing  all  move- 
ments on  the  Pacific  side  of  the  continent,  probably  from  an 
original  ethnic  port  of  entry  near  Bering  Strait ;  and  part 
also  of  the  general  southward  drift  in  search  of  more  genial 
climate,  which  landed  the  van  of  northern  Siouan,  Algonquin 
and  Iroquoian  stocks  in  the  present  area  of  South  Carolina, 
Georgia,  Alabama,  Mississippi  and  Louisiana,  while  the  base 
of  their  territory  stretched  out  to  its  greatest  width  in  south- 
ern Canada  and  contiguous  parts  of  the  United  States.  [See 
map  page  54.] (1 


Indo-Aryan 
Monpoloid 
Dravidian 
Aryo-Dravidian 
E3  Turco-Dravidian 


Mongolo-Dravidian 
H  Turco-Iranian 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL  MAP  OF  INDIA  FROM  THE  INDIAN  CENSUS  OF  1901. 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 


103 


If  we  turn  to  the  eastern  hemisphere,  we  find  the  Malays  Range  of 
and  Malayo-Polynesians,  differentiated  offshoots  of  the  Mon-  m°vements 
golian  stock,  restricted  to  the  Tropics,  except  where  Poly- 


in  Asia. 


70 


10 


120 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL  MAP  OF  ASIA. 

Vertical  Shading  in  the  North  is    Slav. 

nesians  have  spread  to  outlying  New  Zealand.     The  Chinese 
draw  their  political  boundary  nearly  along  the  Tropic  of  Can- 


104  THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 

cer,  but  they  have  freely  lapped  over  this  frontier  into  Indo- 
C'hina  as  far  as  Singapore.72  Combined  with  this  expansion 
was  the  early  infiltration  of  the  Chinese  into  the  Philippines, 
Borneo,  and  the  western  Sunda  Isles,  all  distinctly  tropical. 
The  fact  that  the  Chinese  show  a  physical  capacity  for  ac- 
climatization found  in  no  other  race  explains  in  part  their 
presence  into  the  Tropics.  In  contrast,  the  Aryan  folk  of 
India,  whether  in  their  pure  type  as  found  in  the  Punjab  and 
Rajputana  Desert,  or  mingled  with  the  earlier  Dravidian  race, 
belong  to  the  hot  belt  but  scarcely  reach  the  Tropic  of  Can- 
cer,73 though  their  language  has  far  overshot  this  line  both  in 
the  Deccan  and  the  Ganges  Delta.  One  spore  of  Aryan  stock, 
in  about  450  B.  C.,  moved  by  sea  from  the  Bay  of  Cambay  to 
Ceylon;  mingling  there  with  the  Tamil  natives,  they  became 
the  progenitors  of  the  Singhalese,  forming  a  hybrid  tropical 
offshoot. 

Europe,  except  for  its  small  sub-arctic  area,  has  received 
immigrants,  according  to  the  testimony  of  history  and  eth- 
nology, only  from  the  temperate  parts  of  Asia  and  Africa, 
with  the  one  exception  of  the  Saracens  of  Arabia,  whose 
original  home  lay  wholly  within  the  hot  climate  belt  of  20°  C. 
(68°  F.).  Saracen  expansion,  in  covering  Persia,  Syria,  and 
Egypt,  still  kept  to  this  hot  belt ;  only  in  the  Barbary  Coast 
of  Africa  and  in  Spain  did  it  protrude  into  the  temperate 
belt.  Though  this  last  territory  was  extra-tropical,  it  was 
essentially  semi-arid  and  sub-tropical  in  temperature,  like  the 
dry  trade-wind  belt  whence  the  Saracens  had  sprung. 
Range  of  The  Semitic  folk  of  Arabia  and  the  desert  Hamites  of  north- 

movements  ern  Africa,  bred  by  their  hot,  dry  environment  to  a  nomadic 
life,  have  been  drawn  southward  over  the  Sahara  across  the 
Tropic  into  the  grasslands  of  the  Sudan,  permeating  a  wide 
zone  of  negro  folk  with  the  political  control,  religion,  civiliza- 
tion and  blood  of  the  Mediterranean  north.  Hare  similar 
though  better  conditions  of  life,  a  climate  hotter  though  less 
arid,  attracted  Hamitic  invasion,  while  the  relatively  dense 
native  population  in  a  lower  stage  of  economic  development 
presented  to  the  commercial  Semites  the  attraction  of  lucra- 
tive trade.  South  of  the  equator  the  native  Bantu  Kaffirs,  es- 
sentially a  tropical  people,  spread  beyond  their  zonal  border 


105 


20  10  0  10  20  30  «>  90 


(Pulbe  EKjgjgjI Bantu  Negroes    f      ^  Hova  Malay 

fUm Sudan  Negroes    f|||§Hottentot  tUM  Pygmies 

K^^!i  English  and  Dutch 

ETHNOGRAPHICAL  MAP  OF  AFRICA  AND  ARABIA. 


106 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 


Coloniza- 
tion and 
latitude. 


to  the  south  coast  of  Africa  at  33°  S.  L.,  and  displaced  the 
yellow  Hottentots74  before  the  arrival  of  the  Dutch  in  1602; 
while  in  the  early  nineteenth  century  we  hear  of  the  Makololo, 
a  division  of  this  same  Kaffir  stock,  leaving  their  native 
seats  near  the  southern  sources  of  the  Vaal  River  at  28°  S.  L. 
and  moving  some  nine  hundred  miles  northward  to  the  Barotse 
territory  on  the  upper  Zambesi  at  15°  S.  L.75  This  again  was 
a  movement  of  a  pastoral  people  across  a  tropic  to  other 
grasslands,  to  climatic  conditions  scarcely  different  from  those 
which  they  had  left. 

The  modern  colonial  movements  which  have  been  genuine 
race  expansions  have  shown  a  tendency  not  only  to  adhere  to 
their  zone,  but  to  follow  parallels  of  latitude  or  isotherms. 
The  stratification  of  European  peoples  in  the  Americas,  ex- 
cepting Spanish  and  Portuguese,  coincides  with  heat  zones. 
Internal  colonization  in  the  United  States  reveals  the  same 
principle.76  Russian  settlements  in  Asia  stretch  across  Siberia 
chiefly  between  the  fiftieth  and  fifty-fifth  parallels ;  these  same 
lines  include  the  ancient  Slav  territory  in  Germany  between 
the  Vistula  and  Weser.  The  great  efflux  of  home-srokors,  as 
opposed  to  the  smaller  contingent  of  mere  conquerors  and  ex- 
ploiters, which  has  poured  forth  from  Europe  since  the  fif- 
teenth century,  has  found  its  destinations  largely  in  the  tem- 
perate parts  of  the  Americas,  Australia,  New  Zealand,  and 
South  Africa.  Even  the  Spanish  overlords  in  Mexico  and 
Peru  domiciled  themselves  chiefly  in  the  highlands,  where  alti- 
tude in  part  counteracts  tropical  latitude.  European  immi- 
gration into  South  America  to-day  greatly  predominates  in 
the  temperate  portions, — in  Argentine,  Uruguay,  Paraguay, 
southern  Brazil  and  southern  Chile.  While  Argentine's  popu- 
lation includes  over  one  million  white  foreigners,  who  com- 
prise twenty  per  cent,  of  the  total,77  Venezuela  has  no  genuine 
white  immigration.  Its  population,  which  comprises  only  one 
per  cent,  of  pure  whites,  consists  chiefly  of  negroes,  mulattoes, 
and  Sambos,  hybrids  of  negro  and  Indian  race.  In  British 
Guiana,  negroes  and  East  Indian  coolies,  both  importations 
from  other  tropical  lands,  comprise  eighty-one  per  cent,  of 
the  population.78 

The  movement  of  Europeans  into  the  tropical  regions  of 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  107 

Asia,  Australasia,  Africa  and  America,  like  the  American  ad- 
vance into  the  Philippines,  represents  commercial  and  political, 
not  genuine  ethnic  expansion.  Except  where  it  resorts  to  hy- 
bridization, it  seeks  not  new  homesteads,  but  the  profits  of 
tropical  trade  and  the  markets  for  European  manufactures 
found  in  retarded  populations.  These  it  secures  either  by  a 
small  but  permanently  domiciled  ruling  class,  as  formerly  in 
Spanish  and  Portuguese  America,  or  by  a  body  of  European 
officials,  clerks,  agents  and  soldiers,  sent  out  for  a  term  of 
years.  Such  are  the  seventy-six  thousand  Britishers  who 
manage  the  affairs  of  commerce  and  state  in  British  India, 
and  the  smaller  number  of  Dutch  who  perform  the  same  func- 
tions in  the  Dutch  East  India  islands.  The  basis  of  this  sys- 
tem is  exploitation.  It  represents  neither  a  high  economic, 
ethical,  nor  social  ideal,  and  therefore  lacks  the  stamp  of 
geographic  finality. 

A  migrating  or  expanding  people,  when  free  to  choose,  is  Movement 
prone  to  seek  a  new  home  with  like  geographic  conditions  to  to  ^e 
the  old.  Hence  the  stamp  once  given  by  an  environment  tends  ~£J 
to  perpetuate  itself.  All  people,  especially  those  in  the  lower 
stages  of  culture,  are  conservative  in  their  fundamental  activ 
ities.  Agriculture  is  intolerable  to  pastoral  nomads,  hunting 
has  little  attraction  for  a  genuine  fisher  folk.  Therefore 
such  peoples  in  expansion  seek  an  environment  in  which  the 
national  aptitudes,  slowly  evolved  in  their  native  seats,  find 
a  ready  field.  Thus  arise  natural  provinces  of  distribution, 
whose  location,  climate,  physical  features,  and  size  reflect  the 
social  and  economic  adaptation  of  the  inhabitants  to  a  certain 
type  of  environment.  A  shepherd  folk,  when  breaking  off 
from  its  parent  stock  like  Abraham's  family  from  their  Meso- 
potamian  kinsmen,  seeks  a  land  rich  in  open  pastures  and 
large  enough  to  support  its  wasteful  nomadic  economy.  A 
seafaring  people  absorb  an  ever  longer  strip  of  seaboard,  like 
the  Eskimo  of  Arctic  America,  or  throw  out  their  settlements 
from  inlet  to  inlet  or  island  to  island,  as  did  Malays  and  Poly- 
nesians in  the  Pacific,  ancient  Greeks  and  Phoenicians  in  the 
subtropical  Mediterranean,  and  the  Norse  in  the  northern  seas. 
The  Dutch,  bred  to  the  national  profession  of  diking  and 
draining,  appear  in  their  element  in  the  water-logged  coast 


108 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 


Movement 
to   better 
geographic 
conditions. 


of  Sumatra  and  Guiana,79  where  they  cultivate  lands  reclaimed 
from  the  sea;  or  as  colonists  in  the  Vistula  lowlands,  whither 
Prussia  imported  them  to  do  their  ancestral  task,  just  as  the 
English  employed  their  Dutch  prisoners  after  the  wars  with 
Holland  in  the  seventeenth  century  to  dike  and  drain  the 
fens  of  Cambridgeshire  and  Lincolnshire.  Moreover,  the  com- 
mercial talent  of  the  Dutch,  trained  by  their  advantageous 
situation  on  the  North  Sea  about  the  Rhine  mouths,  guided 
their  early  traders  to  similar  locations  elsewhere,  like  the  Hud- 
son and  Delaware  Rivers,  or  planted  them  on  islands  either 
furnishing  or  commanding  extensive  trade,  such  as  Ceylon, 
Mauritius,  the  East  Indies,  or  the  Dutch  holdings  in  the  An- 
tilles. 

Much  farther  down  in  the  cultural  scale  we  find  the  fisher 
tribes  of  Central  Africa  extending  their  villages  from  point 
to  point  along  the  equatorial  streams,  and  the  river  Indians 
of  South  America  gradually  spreading  from  headwaters  to 
estuary,  and  thence  to  the  related  environment  of  the  coast. 
The  Tupis,  essentially  a  water  race,  have  left  traces  of  their 
occupation  only  where  river  or  coast  enabled  them  to  live  by 
their  inherited  aptitudes.80  The  distribution  of  the  ancient 
mounds  in  North  America  shows  their  builders  to  have  sought 
with  few  exceptions  protected  sites  near  alluvial  lowlands, 
commanding  rich  soil  for  cultivation  and  the  fish  supply  from 
the  nearby  river.  Mountaineer  folk  often  move  from  one  up- 
land district  to  another,  as  did  the  Lombards  of  Alpine  Pan- 
nonia  in  their  conquest  of  Lombardy  and  Apennine  Italy, 
where  all  their  four  duchies  were  restricted  to  the  highlands  of 
the  peninsula.81  The  conquests  of  the  ancient  Incas  and  the 
spread  of  their  race  covered  one  Andean  valley  after  another 
for  a  stretch  of  one  thousand  five  hundred  miles,  wherever  cli- 
matic and  physical  conditions  were  favorable  to  their  irrigated 
tillage  and  highland  herds  of  llamas.  They  found  it  easier  to 
climb  pass  after  pass  and  mount  to  ever  higher  altitudes, 
rather  than  descend  to  the  suffocating  coasts  where  neither 
man  nor  beast  could  long  survive,  though  they  pushed  the  po- 
litical boundary  finally  to  the  seaboard.  [Map  page  101.] 

The  search  for  better  land,  milder  climate,  and  easier  con- 
ditions of  living  starts  many  a  movement  of  peoples  which, 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  109 

in  view  of  their  purpose,  necessarily  leads  them  into  an  en- 
vironment sharply  contrasted  to  their  original  habitat.  Such 
has  been  the  radial  outflow  of  the  Mongoloid  tribes  down 
from  the  rugged  highlands  of  central  Asia  to  the  fertile  river 
lowlands  of  the  peripheral  lands ;  the  descent  of  the  Iran  pas- 
tors upon  the  agricultural  folk  of  the  Indus,  Ganges  and 
Mesopotamian  valleys,  and  the  swoop  of  desert-born  conquer- 
ors upon  the  unresisting  tillers  of  well-watered  fields  in  all 
times,  from  .the  ancient  Hyksos  of  the  Nile  to  the  modern 
Fulbe  of  the  Niger  Valley. 

The  attraction  of  a  milder  climate  has  caused  in  the  north-  Southward 
ern  hemisphere  a  constantly  recurring  migration  from  north  andwest- 
to  south.    In  primitive  North  America,  along  the  whole  broad  .    ^ 
Atlantic  slope,  the  predominant  direction  of  Indian  migra-  northern 
tions   was    from   north    to    south,    accompanied    by    a    drift  hemi- 
from  west  to  east.82    On  the  Pacific  side  of  the  continent  also  sphere- 
the  trend  was  southward.    This  is  generally  conceded  regard- 
less of  theory  as  to  whether  the  Indians  first  found  entrance 
to  the  continent  at  its  northeast  or  northwest  corner.    It  was 
a     movement     toward     milder     climates.83       Study     of    the 
Volkenvanderungen  in  Europe  reveals  two  currents  or  drifts 
in  varied   combination,   one   from   north   to   south    and   the 
other  from  east  to  west,  but  both  of  them  aimed  at  regions  of 
better  climate ;  for  the  milder  temperature  and  more  abundant 
rainfall  of  western  Europe  made  a  country  as  alluring  to  the 
Goths,  Huns,  Alans,  Slavs,  Bulgars  and  Tartars  of  Asiatic 
deserts    and    Russian    steppes,    as    were    the    sunny    Medi- 
terranean peninsulas  to  the  dwellers  of  the  bleak  Baltic  coasts. 
This  is  one  geographic  fact  back  of  the  conspicuous  westward 
movement  formulated  into  an  historical  principle :  "Westward 
the  star  of  empire  takes  its  course."     The  establishment  of 
European  colonies  on  the  western  side  of  the  Atlantic,  their 
extension  thence  to  the  Pacific  and  ever  westward,  till  Euro- 
pean culture  was  transplanted  to  the  Philippines  by  Spain 
and  more  recently  by  the  United  States,  constitute  the  most 
remarkable  sustained  movement  made  by  any  one  race. 

But  westward  movements  are  not  the  only  ones.     On  the  Eastward 
Pacific  slope  of  Asia  the  star  has  moved  eastward.     From  movements. 
Iiighland  Mongolia  issued  the  throng  which  originally  popu- 


110 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 


Return 
movements. 


Regions 
of  at- 
traction 
and 
repulsion. 


lated  the  lowlands  of  China;  and  ever  since,  one  nomad  con- 
queror after  the  other  has  descended  thence  to  rule  the  fruit- 
ful plains  of  Chili  and  the  teeming  populations  of  the  Yangtze 
Valley.84  Russia,  blocked  in  its  hoped  for  expansion  to  the  west 
by  the  strong  powers  of  central  Europe,  stretched  its  dominion 
eastward  to  the  Pacific  and  for  a  short  time  over  to  Alaska. 
The  chief  expansion  of  the  German  people  and  the  German 
Empire  in  historical  times  has  also  been  from  west  to  east ;  but 
this  eastward  advance  is  probably  only  retracing  the  steps 
taken  by  many  primitive  Teutonic  tribes  as  they  drifted 
Rhineward  from  an  earlier  habitat  along  the  Vistula. 

Since  the  world  is  small,  it  frequently  happens  that  a  peo- 
ple after  an  interval  of  generations,  armed  with  a  higher 
civilization,  will  reenter  a  region  which  it  once  left  when  too 
crude  and  untutored  to  develop  the  possibilities  of  the  land, 
but  which  its  better  equipment  later  enables  it  to  exploit. 
Thus  we  find  a  backward  expansion  of  the  Chinese  westward  to 
the  foot  of  the  Pamir,  and  an  internal  colonization  of  the 
empire  to  the  Hi  feeder  of  Lake  Balkash.  The  expansion  of 
the  Japanese  into  Korea  and  Saghalin  is  undoubtedly  such  a 
return  current,  after  an  interval  long  enough  to  work  a  com- 
plete transformation  in  the  primitive  Mongolians  who  found 
their  way  to  that  island  home.  Sometimes  the  return  repre- 
sents the  ebbing  of  the  tide,  rather  than  the  back  water  of  a 
stream  in  flood.  Such  was  the  retreat  of  the  Moors  from 
Spain  to  the  Berber  districts  of  North  Africa,  whither  they 
carried  echoes  of  the  brilliant  Saracen  civilization  in  the 
Iberian  Peninsula.  Such  has  been  the  gradual  withdrawal  of 
the  Turks  from  Europe  back  to  their  native  Asia,  and  slow 
expulsion  of  the  Tartar  tribes  from  Russia  to  the  barren 
Asiatic  limits  of  their  former  territory.  [See  map  page  225.] 

Voluntary  historical  movements,  seeking  congenial  or  choice 
regions  of  the  earth,  have  left  its  less  favored  spots  undis- 
turbed. Paucity  of  resources  and  isolation  have  generally 
insured  to  a  region  a  peaceful  history;  natural  wealth  has 
always  brought  the  conqueror.  In  ancient  Greece  the  fruit- 
ful plains  of  Thessaly,  Boeotia,  Elis  and  Laconia  had  a 
fatal  attraction  for  every  migrating  horde;  Attica's  rugged 
surface,  poor  soil,  and  side-tracked  location  off  the  main  line 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  111 

of  travel  between  Hellas  and  the  Peloponnesus  saved  it  from 
many  a  rough  visitant,85  and  hence  left  the  Athenians,  ac- 
cording to  Tlmcydides,  an  indigenous  race.  The  fertility  of 
the  Rhine  Valley  has  always  attracted  invasion,  the  barren 
Black  Forest  range  has  repelled  and  obstructed  it. 

The  security  of  such  unproductive  highlands  lies  more  in 
their  failure  to  attract  than  in  their  power  to  resist  con- 
quest. When  to  abundant  natural  resources,  a  single  spot 
adds  a  reputation  for  wealth,  magnificence,  an  exceptional 
position  for  the  control  of  territory  or  commerce,  it  becomes 
a  geographical  magnet.  Such  was  Delphi  for  the  Gauls  of  the 
Balkan  Peninsula  in  the  third  century,  Rome  for  the  Germanic 
and  Hunnish  tribes  of  the  Volkerwanderung,  Constantinople 
for  the  Normans,  Turks  and  Russians,  Venice  for  land-locked 
Austria,  the  Mississippi  highway  and  the  outlet  at  New  Or- 
leans for  our  Trans-Allegheny  pioneers. 

Sometimes   the  goal  is   fabulous   or   mythical,   but  potent  Psychical 
to  lure,  like  the  land  of  El  Dorado,  abounding  in  gold  and  influences 

iewels,  which  for  two  centuries  spurred  on  Spanish  explora- 

movementS; 
tion  m  America.     Other  than  purely  material  motives  may 

initiate  or  maintain  such  a  movement,  an  ideal  or  a  dream  of 
good,  like  the  fountain  of  eternal  youth  which  brought  Ponce 
de  Leon  to  Florida,  the  search  for  the  Islands  of  the  Blessed, 
or  the  spirit  of  religious  propaganda  which  stimulated  the 
spread  of  the  Spanish  in  Mexico  and  the  French  in  Canada,  or 
the  hope  of  religious  toleration  which  has  drawn  Quaker,  Puri- 
tan, Huguenot,  and  Jew  to  America.  It  was  an  idea  of  purely 
spiritual  import  which  directed  the  century-long  movement  of 
the  Crusades  toward  Jerusalem,  half  Latinized  the  Levant, 
and  widened  the  intellectual  horizon  of  Europe.  A  national  or 
racial  sentiment  which  enhaloes  a  certain  spot  may  be  preg- 
nant with  historical  results,  because  at  any  moment  it  may 
start  some  band  of  enthusiasts  on  a  path  of  migration  or  con- 
quest. The  Zionist  agitation  for  the  return  of  oppressed  Jews 
to  Palestine,  and  the  establishment  of  the  Liberian  Republic 
for  the  negroes  in  Africa  rest  upon  such  a  sentiment.  The 
reverence  of  the  Christian  world  for  Rome  as  a  goal  of  pil- 
grimages materially  enhanced  the  influence  of  Italy  as  a  school 
of  culture  during  the  Middle  Ages.  The  spiritual  and  ethnic 


112 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 


Results  of 

historical 

movement. 


Differen- 
tiation 
and  area. 


association  of  the  Mohammedan  world  with  Mecca  is  always 
fraught  with  possible  political  results.  The  dominant  tribe  ; 
of  the  Sudan,  followers  of  Islam,  who  proudly  trace  bac 
fictitious  line  of  ancestry  to  the  Arabs  of  Yemen,  are  readily 
incited  to  support  a  new  prophet  sprung  from  the  race  of 
Mecca.88  The  pilgrimages  which  the  Buddhists  of  the  Asiatic 
highlands  make  to  the  sacred  city  of  Lhassa  ensure  China's 
control  over  the  restless  nomads  through  the  instrumentality 
of  the  Grand  Lama  of  Tibet. 

Historical  movements  are  varied  as  to  motive,  direction, 
numerical  strength,  and  character,  but  their  final  results  are 
two,  differentiation  and  assimilation.  Both  are  important 
phases  of  the  process  of  evolution,  but  the  latter  gains  force 
with  the  progress  of  history  and  the  increase  of  the  world's 
population. 

A  people  or  race  which,  in  its  process  of  numerical  growth, 
spreads  over  a  large  territory  subjects  itself  to  a  widening 
range  of  geographic  conditions,  and  therefore  of  differ- 
entiation. The  broad  expansion  of  the  Teutonic  race  in  Eu- 
rope, America,  Australia  and  South  Africa  has  brought  it  into 
every  variety  of  habitat.  If  the  territory  has  a  monotonous 
relief  like  Russia,  nevertheless,  its  mere  extent  involves  diver- 
sity of  climate  and  location.  The  diversity  of  climate  incident 
to  large  area  involves  in  turn  different  animal  and  plant  life, 
different  crops,  different  economic  activities.  Even  in  low- 
lands the  relief,  geologic  structure,  and  soil  are  prone  to  vary 
over  wide  districts.  The  monotonous  surface  of  Holland 
shows  such  contrasts.  So  do  the  North  German  lowlands ;  here 
the  sandy  barren  flats  of  the  "geest"  alternate  with  stretches 
of  fertile  silt  deposited  by  the  rivers  or  the  sea,87  and  support 
different  types  of  communities,  which  have  been  admirably  de- 
scribed by  Gustav  Frenssen  in  his  great  novel  of  Jon  Uhl. 
The  flat  surface  of  southern  Illinois  shows  in  small  compass 
the  teeming  fertility  of  the  famous  "American  bottom,"  the 
poor  clay  soil  of  "Egypt"  with  its  backward  population,  and 
the  rich  prairie  land  just  to  the  north  with  its  prosperous  and 
progressive  farmer  class. 

When  the  relief  includes  mountains,  the  character  not  only 
of  the  land  but  of  the  climate  changes,  and  therewith  the  type 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  113 

of  community.  Hence  neighboring  districts  may  produce 
strongly  contrasted  types  of  society.  Madison  County  of 
Kentucky,  lying  on  the  eastern  margin  of  the  Bluegrass  re- 
gion, contains  the  rich  landed  estates,  negro  laboring  class  and 
aristocratic  society  characteristic  of  the  "planter"  communi- 
ties of  the  old  South ;  and  only  twenty  miles  southeast  of  Rich- 
mond, the  center  of  this  wealth  and  refinement,  it  includes  also 
the  rough  barren  hill  country  of  the  Cumberland  Plateau, 
where  are  found  one-room  cabins,  moonshine  stills,  feuds,  and 
a  backward  population  sprung  from  the  same  pure  English 
stock  as  the  Bluegrass  people. 

Here  is  differentiation  due  to  the  immediate  influences  of  Contrasted 

4.       mu        u  •  e  environ- 

environment.      Ihe  phenomenon  reappears  in  every  part  of         t 

the  world,  in  every  race  and  every  age.  The  contrast  between 
the  ancient  Greeks  of  the  mountains,  coasts  and  alluvial  val- 
leys shows  the  power  of  environment  to  direct  economic  activ- 
ities and  to  modify  culture  and  social  organization.  So  does 
the  differences  between  the  coast,  steppe,  and  forest  Indians  of 
Guiana,88  the  Kirghis  of  the  Pamir  pastures  and  the  Irtysh 
River  valley,  the  agricultural  Berbers  of  the  Atlas  Mountains 
and  the  Berber  nomads  of  the  Sahara,  the  Swiss  of  the  high, 
lonely  Engadine  and  those  of  the  crowded  Aar  valley. 

Contrasted  environments  effect  a  natural  selection  in  an- 
other way  and  thereby  greatly  stimulate  differentiation,  when- 
ever an  intruding  people  contest  the  ownership  of  the  territory 
with  the  inhabitants.  The  struggle  for  land  means  a  struggle 
also  for  the  best  land,  which  therefore  falls  to  the  share  of  the 
strongest  peoples.  Weaklings  must  content  themselves  with 
poor  soils,  inaccessible  regions  of  mountain,  swamp  or  desert. 
There  they  deteriorate,  or  at  best  strike  a  slower  pace  of  in- 
crease or  progress.  The  difference  between  the  people  of  the 
highlands  and  plains  of  Great  Britain  or  of  France  is  there- 
fore in  part  a  distinction  of  race  due  to  this  geographical  se- 
lection,89 in  part  a  distinction  of  economic  development  and 
culture  due  to  geographic  influences.  Therefore  the  piedmont 
belts  of  the  world,  except  in  arid  lands,  are  cultural,  ethnic 
and  often  political  lines  of  cleavage,  showing  marked  differen- 
tiation on  either  side.  Isotherms  are  other  such  cleavage  lines, 
marking  the  limits  beyond  which  an  aggressive  people  did  not 


114  THE  MOV01KNTS  OF  PEOPLES 

desire  to  expand  because  of  an  uncongenial  climate.  The  dis- 
tinction between  Anglo-Saxon  and  Latin  America  is  one  of 
zone  as  well  as  race.  Everywhere  in  North  America  the  Eng- 
lish stock  has  dominated  or  displaced  French  and  Spanish 
competitors  down  to  the  Mexican  frontier. 

As  the  great  process  of  European  colonization  has  perme- 
ated the  earth  and  multiplied  its  population,  not  only  the  best 
land  but  the  amount  of  this  has  commenced  to  differentiate 
the  history  of  various  European  nations,  and  that  in  a 
way  whose  end  cannot  yet  be  definitely  predicted.  The  best 
lands  have  fallen  to  the  first-comers  strong  enough  to  hold 
them.  People  who  early  develop  powers  of  expansion,  like 
the  English,  or  who,  like  the  French  and  Russians,  formulate 
and  execute  vast  territorial  policies,  secure  for  their  future 
growth  a  wide  base  which  will  for  all  time  distinguish  them 
from  late-comers  into  the  colonial  field,  like  Germany  and 
Italy.  These  countries  see  the  fecundity  of  their  people  re- 
dounding to  the  benefit  of  alien  colonial  lands,  which  have 
been  acquired  by  enterprising  rivals  in  the  choice  sections  of 
the  temperate  zone.  German  and  Italian  colonies  in  torrid, 
unhealthy,  or  barren  tropical  lands,  fail  to  attract  emigrants 
from  the  mother  country,  and  therefore  to  enhance  national 
growth. 

Two-type  When  colonizers  or  conquerors  appropriate  the  land  of  a 

populations.  lower  race,  we  find  a  territory  occupied  at  least  for  a  time 
by  two  types  of  population,  constituting  an  ethnic,  social  and 
often  economic  differentiation.  The  separation  may  be  made 
geographical  also.  The  Indians  in  the  United  States  have 
been  confined  to  reservations,  like  the  Hottentots  to  the  twenty 
or  more  "locations"  in  Cape  Colony.  This  is  the  simplest 
arrangement.  Whether  the  second  or  lower  type  survives 
depends  upon  their  economic  and  social  utility,  into  which 
again  geographic  conditions  enter.  The  Indians  of  Canada 
are  a  distinct  economic  factor  in  that  country  as  trappers  for 
the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  and  they  will  so  remain  till  the 
hunting  grounds  of  the  far  north  are  exhausted.  The  native 
agriculturists  in  the  Tropics  are  indispensable  to  the  unac- 
dimated  whites.  The  negroes  of  the  South,  introduced  for  an 
economic  purpose,  find  their  natural  habitat  in  the  Black  Belt. 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  115 

Here  we  have  an  ethnic  division  of  labor  for  geographical 
reasons.  Castes  or  social  classes,  often  distinguished  by  shades 
of  color  as  in  Brahman  India,  survive  as  differentiations  in- 
dicating old  lines  of  race  cleavage.  There  is  abundant  evi- 
dence that  the  upper  classes  in  Germany,  France,  Austria, 
and  the  British  Isles  are  distinctly  lighter  of  hair  and  eyes 
than  the  peasantry.90  The  high-class  Japanese  are  taller  and 
fairer  than  the  masses.  Nearly  all  the  African  tribes  of  the 
Sudan  and  bordering  Sahara  include  two  distinct  classes,  one 
of  lighter  and  one  of  darker  shade.  Many  Fulbe  tribes 
distinguish  these  classes  by  the  names  of  "Blacks"  and 
"Whites."9  The  two-type  people  are  the  result  of  historical 
movements. 

Differentiation  results  not  only  from  contrasted  geographic 
conditions,  but  also  from  segregation.  A  moA'ing  or  expand-  an(j 
ing  throng  in  search  of  more  and  better  lands  drops  off  one  isolation, 
group  to  occupy  a  fertile  valley  or  plain,  while  the  main  body 
goes  on  its  way,  till  it  reaches  a  satisfactory  destination  or 
destinations.  The  tendency  to  split  and  divide,  characteristic 
of  primitive  peoples,  is  thus  stimulated  by  migration  and  ex- 
pansion. Each  offshoot,  detached  from  the  main  body,  tends 
to  diverge  from  the  stock  type.  If  it  reaches  a  naturally 
isolated  region,  where  its  contact  without  is  practically  cut  off, 
it  grows  from  its  own  loins,  emphasizes  its  group  characteristic 
by  close  in-breeding,  and  tends  to  show  a  development  related 
to  biological  divergence  under  conditions  of  isolation.  Since 
roan  is  essentially  a  gregarious  animal,  the  size  of  every  such 
migrating  band  will  always  prevent  the  evolution  of  any 
sharply  defined  variety,  according  to  the  standard  of  biology. 
Nevertheless,  the  divergent  types  of  men  and  societies  devel- 
oped in  segregated  regions  are  an  echo  of  the  formation  of  new 
species  under  conditions  of  isolation  which  is  now  generally  ac- 
knowledged by  biological  science.  Isolation  was  recognized 
by  Darwin  as  an  occasional  factor  in  the  origin  of  species  and 
especially  of  divergence;  in  combination  with  migration  it 
was  made  the  basis  of  a  theory  of  evolution  by  Moritz  Wagner 
in  1873  ;92  and  in  recent  years  has  come  to  be  regarded  as  an 
essential  in  the  explanation  of  divergence  of  types,  as  op- 
posed to  differentiation.93 


116 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 


Differen- 
tiation 
and  di- 
gression. 


The  traditions  of  the  Delaware  Indians  and  Sioux  in  the 
north  of  the  United  States  territory,  and  of  the  Creeks  in  the 
south,  commence  with  each  stock  group  as  a  united  body, 
which,  as  it  migrates,  splits  into  tribes  and  sends  out  off- 
shoots developing  different  dialects.  Here  was  tribal  dif- 
ferentiation after  entry  into  the  general  stock  area,  the  pro- 
cess going  on  during  migration  as  well  as  after  the  tribes  had 
become  established  in  their  respective  habitats.  Culture,  how- 
ever, made  little  progress  till  after  they  became  sedentary  and 
took  up  agriculture  to  supplement  the  chase.94  Tribes  some- 
times wander  far  beyond  the  limits  of  their  stock,  like  the 
Iroquoian  Cherokees  of  East  Tennessee  and  North  Carolina 
or  the  Athapascan  Navajos  and  Apaches  of  arid  New  Mexico 
and  Arizona,  who  had  placed  twenty  or  thirty  degrees  of  lati- 
tude between  themselves  and  their  brethren  in  the  basins  of 
the  Yukon  and  Mackenzie  rivers.  Such  inevitably  come  into 
contrasted  climatic  conditions,  which  further  modify  the  im- 
migrants. [See  map  page  54.] 

Wide  digressions  differentiate  them  still  further  from  the 
parent  stock  by  landing  them  amid  different  ethnic  and  social 
groups,  by  contact  with  whom  they  are  inevitably  modified. 
The  Namaqua  Hottentots,  living  on  the  southern  margin  of 
the  Hottentot  country  near  the  frontier  of  the  European  set- 
tlements in  Cape  Colony,  acquired  some  elements  of  civiliza- 
tion, together  with  a  strain  of  Boer  and  English  blood,  and  in 
some  cases  even  the  Dutch  vernacular.  They  were  therefore 
differentiated  from  their  nomadic  and  warlike  kinsmen  in  the 
grasslands  north  of  the  Orange  River,  which  formed  the  cen- 
ter of  the  Hottentot  area.85  A  view  of  the  ancient  Germans 
during  the  first  five  or  six  centuries  after  Christ  reveals  dif- 
ferentiation by  various  contacts  in  process  along  all  the 
ragged  borders  of  the  Germanic  area.  The  offshoots  who 
pushed  westward  across  the  Rhine  into  Belgian  Gaul  were 
rapidly  Celticized,  abandoning  their  semi-nomadic  life  for 
sedentary  agriculture,  assimilating  the  superior  civilization 
which  they  found  there,  and  steadily  merging  with  the  native 
population.  They  became  Belgae,  though  still  conscious  of 
their  Teutonic  origin.96  The  Batavians,  an  offshoot  of  the 
ancient  Chatti  living  near  the  Thuringian  Forest,  appropri- 


117 

ated  the  river  island  between  the  Rhine  and  the  Waal.  There 
in  the  seclusion  of  their  swamps,  they  became  a  distinct  na- 
tional unit,  retaining  their  backward  German  culture  and 
primitive  type  of  German  speech,  which  the  Chatti  themselves 
lost  by  contact  with  the  High  Germans.97  Far  away  on  the 
southeastern  margin  of  the  Teutonic  area  the  same  process 
of  assimilation  to  a  foreign  civilization  went  on  a  little  later 
when  the  Visigoths,  after  a  century  of  residence  on  the  lower 
Danube  in  contact  with  the  Eastern  Empire,  adopted  the 
Arian  form  of  Christianity  which  had  arisen  in  the  Greek 
peninsula.88  The  border  regions  of  the  world  show  the  typical 
results  of  the  historical  movement — differentiation  from  the 
core  or  central  group  through  assimilation  to  a  new  group 
which  meets  and  blends  with  it  along  the  frontier. 

Entrance   into  a  naturally   isolated   district,   from   which  Geograph- 
subsequent    incursions    are    debarred,    gives    conditions    for  1C 
divergence  and  the  creation  of  a  new  type.     On  the  other  h 
hand,  where  few  physical  barriers  are  present  to  form  these  geneity 
natural  pockets,  the  process  of  assimilation  goes  on  over  a  and  homo- 
wide  field.   Europe  is  peculiar  among  the  family  of  continents 
for    its    "much    divided"    geography,    commented    upon    by 
Strabo.     Hence  its  islands,  peninsulas  and  mountain-rimmed 
basins  have  produced  a  variegated  assemblage  of  peoples, 
languages   and   culture.      Only   where   it   runs   off  into   the 
monotonous  immensity  of  Russia  do  we  find  a  people  who  in 
their  physical  traits,  language,  and  civilization  reflect  the 
uniformity  of  their  environment." 

Africa's  smooth  outline,  its  plateau  surface  rimmed  with 
mountains  which  enclose  but  fail  to  divide,  and  its  monoto- 
nous configuration  have  produced  a  racial  and  cultural  uni- 
formity as  striking  as  Europe's  heterogeneity.  Constant 
movements  and  commixture,  migration  and  conquest,  have 
been  the  history  of  the  black  races,  varied  by  victorious  in- 
cursions of  the  Hamitic  and  Semitic  whites  from  the  north, 
which,  however,  have  resulted  in  the  amalgamation  of  the  two 
races  after  conquest.  lfl  Constant  fusion  has  leveled  also  the 
social  and  political  relations  of  the  people  to  one  type;  it 
has  eliminated  primordial  groups,  except  where  the  dwarf 
hunters  have  taken  refuge  in  the  equatorial  forests  and  the 


118 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 


Differen- 
tiation 
versus 

flssimilfl- 

tion. 


Elimina- 
tion by 
historical 
movement. 


Bushmen  in  the  southwestern  deserts,  just  as  it  has  thwarted 
the  development  of  higher  social  groups  by  failure  to  segre- 
gate and  protect.  It  has  sown  the  Bantu  speech  broadcast 
over  the  immense  area  of  Central  Africa,  and  is  disseminat- 
ing the  Hausa  language  through  the  agency  of  a  highly 
mixed  commercial  folk  over  a  wide  tract  of  the  western  Sudan. 
The  long  east-and-west  stretch  of  the  Sudan  grasslands  pre- 
sents an  unobstructed  zone  between  the  thousand-mile  belt  of 
desert  to  the  north  and  the  dense  equatorial  forests  to  the 
south,  between  hunger  and  thirst  on  one  side,  heat  and  fever 
and  impenetrable  forests  on  the  other.  Hence  the  Sudan 
in  all  history  has  been  the  crowded  Broadway  of  Africa. 
Here  pass  commercial  caravans,  hybrid  merchant  tribes  like 
the  Hausa,  throngs  of  pilgrims,  streams  of  peoples,  herds  of 
cattle  moving  to  busy  markets,  rude  incursive  shoppers  or 
looters  from  the  desert,  coming  to  buy  or  rob  or  rule  in  this 
highway  belt.  [See  map  page  105.] 

Historical  development  advances  by  means  of  differentia- 
tion and  assimilation.  A  change  of  environment  stimulates 
variation.  Primitive  culture  is  loath  to  change;  its  inertia 
is  deep-seated.  Only  a  sharp  prod  will  start  it  moving  or 
accelerate  its  speed ;  such  a  prod  is  found  in  new  geographic 
conditions  or  new  social  contacts.  Divergence  in  a  segre- 
gated spot  may  be  overdone.  Progress  crawls  among  a 
people  too  long  isolated,  though  incipient  civilization  thrives 
for  a  time  in  seclusion.  But  in  general,  accessibility,  ex- 
posure to  some  measure  of  ethnic  amalgamation  and  social 
contact  is  essential  to  sustained  progress.  10  As  the  world 
has  become  more  closely  populated  and  means  of  communica- 
tion have  improved,  geographical  segregation  is  increasingly 
rare.  The  earth  has  lost  its  "corners."  All  parts  are  being 
drawn  into  the  circle  of  intercourse.  Therefore  differentia- 
tion, the  first  effect  of  the  historical  movement,  abates;  the 
second  effect,  assimilation,  takes  the  lead. 

The  ceaseless  human  movements  making  for  new  combina- 
tions have  stimulated  development.  They  have  lifted  the 
level  of  culture,  and  worked  towards  homogeneity  of  race 
and  civilization  on  a  higher  plane.  Since  the  period  of  the 
great  discoveries  inaugurated  by  Columbus  enabled  the  his- 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  119 

torical  movement  to  compass  the  world,  whole  continents,  like 
North  America  and  Australia,  have  been  reclaimed  to  civiliza- 
tion by  colonization.  The  process  of  assimilation  is  often 
ruthless  in  its  method.  Hence  it  has  been  attended  by 
a  marked  reduction  in  the  number  of  different  ethnic  stocks, 
tribes,  languages,  dialects,  social  and  cultural  types  through 
wide-spread  elimination  of  the  weak,  backward  or  unfit.  10 
These  have  been  wiped  out,  either  by  extermination  or  the 
slower  proce.ss  of  absorption.  The  Indian  linguistic  stocks 
in  the  United  States  have  been  reduced  from  fifty-three  to 
thirty-two ;  and  of  those  thirty-two,  many  survive  as  a  single 
tribe  or  the  shrinking  remnant  of  one.  103  In  Africa  the  slave 
trade  has  caused  the  annihilation  of  many  small  tribes.104  The 
history  of  the  Hottentots,  who  have  been  passive  before  the 
active  advance  of  the  English,  Dutch  and  Kaffirs  about  them, 
shows  a  race  undergoing  a  widespread  process  of  hybridiza- 
tion105 and  extermination.106 

Strong  peoples,  like  the  English,  French,  Russians  and 
Chinese,  occupy  ever  larger  areas.  Where  an  adverse  climate 
precludes  genuine  colonization,  as  it  did  for  the  Spanish  in 
Central  and  South  America,  and  for  the  English  and  Dutch 
in  the  Indies,  they  make  their  civilization,  if  not  their  race, 
permeate  the  acquired  territory,  and  gradually  impose  on  it 
their  language  and  economic  methods.  The  Poles,  who  once 
boasted  a  large  and  distinguished  nationality,  are  being 
Germanized  and  Russified  to  their  final  national  extinction. 
The  Finns,  whose  Scandinavian  offshoot  has  been  almost 
absorbed  in  Sweden,107  are  being  forcibly  dissolved  in  the 
Muscovite  dominion  by  powerful  reagents,  by  Russian  school- 
masters, a  Russian  priesthood,  Russian  military  service. 

No   new   types    of   races   have   been    developed   either   by  No  new 
amalgamation  or  by  transfer  to  new  climatic  and  economic  ethnic 
conditions  in  historic  times.     Contrasted  geographic  condi- 
tions  long  ago  lost  their  power  to   work   radical  physical 
changes  in  the  race  type,  because  man  even  with  the  begin- 
nings of  civilization  learned  to  protect  himself  against  ex- 
tremes of  climate.      He  therefore  preserved  his  race  type, 
which  consequently  in  the  course  of  ages  lost  much  of  its  plas- 
ticity and  therewith  its  capacity  to  evolve  new  varieties.  10 


120  THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 

Where  ethnic  amalgamations  on  a  large  scale  have  occurred 
as  a  result  of  the  historical  movement,  as  in  Mexico,  the  Sudan 
and  Central  Africa,  the  local  race,  being  numerically  stronger 
than  the  intruders  and  better  adapted  to  the  environment, 
has  succeeded  in  maintaining  its  type,  though  slightly  modi- 
fied, side  by  side  with  the  intruders.  The  great  historical 
movements  of  modern  times,  however,  have  been  the  expan- 
sion of  European  peoples  over  the  retarded  regions  of  the 
world.  These  peoples,  coming  into  contact  with  inferior 
races,  and  armed  generally  with  a  race  pride  which  was  an- 
tagonistic to  hybrid  marriages,  preserved  their  blood  from 
extensive  intermixture.  Hybridism,  where  it  existed,  was  an 
ephemeral  feature  restricted  to  pioneer  days,  when  white 
women  were  scarce,  or  to  regions  of  extreme  heat  or  cold, 
where  white  women  and  children  could  with  difficulty  survive. 
Even  in  Spanish  America,  where  ethnic  blendings  were  most 
extensive,  something  of  the  old  Spanish  pride  of  race  has 
reasserted  itself. 

Checks  to  Improved  communication  maintains  or  increases  the  ranks 

differentia-  of  ^he  intruders  from  the  home  supply.  The  negroes  in 
North  America,  imported  as  they  were  en  masse,  then  steadily 
recruited  by  two  centuries  of  the  slave  trade,  while  their 
race  integrity  was  somewhat  protected  by  social  ostracism, 
have  not  been  seriously  modified  physically  by  several  genera- 
tions of  residence  in  a  temperate  land.  Their  changes  have 
been  chiefly  cultural.  The  Englishman  has  altered  only 
superficially  in  the  various  British  colonial  lands.  Constant 
intercourse  and  the  progress  of  inventions  have  enabled  him 
to  maintain  in  diverse  regions  approximate  uniformity  of 
physical  well-being,  similar  social  and  political  ideals.  The 
changed  environment  modifies  him  in  details  of  thought,  man- 
ner, and  speech,  but  not  in  fundamentals. 

Moreover,  civilized  man  spreading  everywhere  and  turning 
all  parts  of  the  earth's  surface  to  his  uses,  has  succeeded  to 
some  extent  in  reducing  its  physical  differences.  The  earth  as 
modified  by  human  action  is  a  conspicuous  fact  of  historical 
development.  109  Irrigation,  drainage,  fertilization  of  soils, 
terrace  agriculture,  denudation  of  forests  and  forestration 
of  prairies  have  all  combined  to  diminish  the  contrasts  be- 


121 

tween  diverse  environments,  while  the  acclimatization  of 
plants,  animals  and  men  works  even  more  plainly  to  the  same 
end  of  uniformity.  The  unity  of  the  human  race,  varied 
only  by  superficial  differences,  reflects  the  unity  of  the 
spherical  earth,  whose  diversities  of  geographical  feature 
nowhere  depart  greatly  from  the  mean  except  in  point  of 
climate.  Differentiation  due  to  geography,  therefore,  early 
reached  its  limits.  For  assimilation  no  limit  can  be  forseen. 

In  view  of  this  constant  differentiation  on  the  one  hand,  Geogra- 
and  assimilation  on  the  other,  the  historical  movement  has 
made  it  difficult  to  trace  race  types  to  their  origin ;  and  yet 
this  is  a  task  in  which  geography  must  have  a  hand.  Bor- 
rowed civilizations  and  purloined  languages  are  often  so 
many  disguises  which  conceal  the  truth  of  ethnic  relation- 
ships. A  long  migration  to  a  radically  different  habitat, 
into  an  outskirt  or  detached  location  protected  from  the 
swamping  effects  of  cross-breeding,  results  eventually  in  a 
divergence  great  enough  to  obliterate  almost  every  cue  to  the 
ancient  kinship.  The  long-headed  Teutonic  race  of  northern 
Europe  is  regarded  now  by  ethnologists  as  an  offshoot  of  the 
long-headed  brunette  Mediterranean  race  of  African  origin, 
which  became  bleached  out  under  the  pale  suns  of  Scandina- 
vian skies.  The  present  distribution  of  the  various  Teu- 
tonic stocks  is  a  geographical  fact ;  their  supposed  cradle  in 
the  Mediterranean  basin  is  a  geographical  hypothesis.  The 
connecting  links  must  also  be  geographical.  They  must 
prove  the  former  presence  of  the  migrating  folk  in  the  in- 
tervening territory.  A  dolichocephalic  substratum  of  popu- 
lation, with  a  negroid  type  of  skull,  has  in  fact  been  traced 
by  archaeologists  all  over  Europe  through  the  early  and  late 
Stone  Ages.  The  remains  of  these  aboriginal  inhabitants 
are  marked  in  France,  even  in  sparsely  tenanted  districts 
like  the  Auvergne  Plateau,  which  is  now  occupied  by  the 
broad-headed  Alpine  race;  and  they  are  found  to  underlie, 
in  point  of  time,  other  brachycephalic  areas,  like  the  Po  Val- 
ley, Bavaria  and  Russia.  " 

The  origin  of  a  people  can  be  investigated  and  stated  only 
in  terms  of  geography.  The  problem  of  origin  can  be  solved 
only  by  tracing  a  people  from  its  present  habitat,  through 


AAv^A, 


122  THE  MOVEM FATS  OF  PEOPLES 

the  country  over  which  it  has  migrated,  back  to  its  original 
seat.  Here  are  three  geographical  entities  which  can  be  laid 
down  upon  a  map,  though  seldom  with  sliarj-ly  defined 
boundaries.  They  represent  three  successive  geographic  lo- 
cations, all  embodying  geographic  conditions  potent  to  in- 
fluence the  people  and  their  movement.  Hence  the  geograph- 
ical element  emerges  in  every  investigation  as  to  origins, 
whether  in  ethnology,  history,  philology,  mythology  or  re- 
ligion. The  transit  land,  the  course  between  start  and  finish, 
is  of  supreme  importance.  Especially  is  this  true  for  religion, 
which  is  transformed  by  travel.  Christianity  did  not  con- 
quer the  world  in  the  form  in  which  it  issued  from  the  cramped 
and  isolated  environment  of  Palestine,  but  only  after  it  had 
been  remodelled  in  Asia  Minor,  Egypt,  Greece  and  Rome,  and 
cosmopolized  in  the  wide  contact  of  the  Mediterranean  basin. 
The  Roman  speech  and  civilization,  which  spread  through  the 
Romance  speaking  peoples  of  Europe,  were  variously  diluted 
and  alloyed  before  being  transplanted  by  French,  Spaniard 
and  Portuguese  to  American  shores,  there  to  be  further 
transformed. 

Large  In  view  of  the  countless  springs  and  tributaries  that  com- 

ers of  bine  ^  sweii  the  current  of  every  historical  movement, 
anthropo-geography  looks  for  the  origin  of  a  people  not  in 
a  narrowly  defined  area,  but  in  a  broad,  ill-defined  center 
of  dispersion,  from  which  many  streams  simultaneously  and 
successively  flow  out  as  from  a  low- rimmed  basin,  nnd  which 
has  been  filled  from  many  remoter  sources.  Autochthones, 
aborigines  are  therefore  merely  scientific  tropes,  indicating 
the  limit  beyond  which  the  movement  of  people  cannot  be 
traced  in  the  gray  light  of  an  uncertain  dawn.  The  vaguer 
and  more  complex  these  movements  on  account  of  their  his- 
torical remoteness,  the  wider  their  probable  range.  The  ques- 
tion as  to  the  geographical  origin  of  the  Aryan  linguistic 
family  of  peoples  brings  us  to  speculative  sources,  more  or 
less  scientifically  based,  reaching  from  Scandinavia  and 
Lithuania  to  the  Hindu  Kush  Mountains  and  northern 
Africa.  n  The  sum  total  of  all  these  conjectural  cradles, 
amounting  to  a  large  geographical  area,  would  more  nearly 
approximate  the  truth  as  to  Aryan  origins.  For  the  study 


123 

of  the  historical  movement  makes  it  clear  that  a  large,  highly 
differentiated  ethnic  or  linguistic  family  presupposes  a  big 
center  and  a  long  period  of  dispersion,  protracted  wander- 
ings, and  a  diversified  area  both  for  their  migrations  and 
successive  settlements. 

The  slighter  the  inner  differences  in  an  ethnic  stock,  Small 
whether  in  culture,  language  or  physical  traits,  the  smaller  centers* 
was  their  center  of  distribution  and  the  more  rapid  their 
dispersal.  The  small  initial  habitat  restricts  the  chances 
of  variation  through  isolation  and  contrasted  geographic 
conditions,  as  does  also  the  short  duration  of  their  subse- 
quent separation.  The  amazing  uniformity  of  the  Eskimo 
type  from  Bering  Strait  to  eastern  Greenland  can  only  thus 
be  explained,  even  after  making  allowance  for  the  monotony 
of  their  geographic  conditions  and  remoteness  from  outside 
influences.  The  distribution  of  the  Bantu  dialects  over  so 
wide  a  region  in  Central  Africa  and  with  such  slight 
divergences  presupposes  narrow  limits  both  of  space  and 
time  for  their  origin,  and  a  short  period  since  their  dis- 
persal.112 

Small  centers  of  dispersion  are  generally  natural  dis- 
tricts with  fixed  boundaries,  favored  by  their  geographical 
location  or  natural  resources  or  by  both  for  the  development 
of  a  relatively  dense  population.  When  this  increases  beyond 
the  local  limits  of  subsistence,  there  follows  an  emigration 
in  point  of  number  and  duration  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
small  area  whence  it  issues.  Ancient  Phoenicia,  Crete,  Samos, 
mediaeval  Norway,  Venice,  Yemen,  modern  Malta,  Gilbert 
Islands,  England  and  Japan  furnish  examples.  Such  small 
favored  areas,  when  they  embody  also  strong  political  power, 
may  get  the  start  in  the  occupation  of  colonial  lands.  This 
gives  them  a  permanent  advantage,  if  their  colonies  are 
chosen  with  a  view  to  settlement  in  congenial  climates,  as  were 
those  of  the  English,  rather  than  the  more  ephemeral  advan- 
tage of  trade,  as  were  those  of  the  Dutch  and  Portuguese 
in  the  Tropics.  It  seems  also  essential  to  these  centers  of 
dispersion,  that,  to  be  effective,  they  must  command  the  wide 
choice  of  outlet  and  destination  afforded  by  the  mighty  com- 
mon of  the  sea.  Only  the  Inca  Empire  in  South  America  gives 


124  THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 

us  an  example  of  the  extensive  political  expansion  of  a  small 
mountain  state. 

Tests  of  The  question  arises  whether  any  single  rule  can  as  yet  be 

origin.  formulated    for   identifying   the   original    seats    of  existing 

peoples.  By  some  ethnologists  and  historians  such  homes 
have  been  sought  where  the  people  are  distributed  in  the 
largest  area,  as  the  Athapascan  and  Algonquin  Indians  are 
assigned  to  a  northern  source,  because  their,  territories  at- 
tained their  greatest  continuous  extent  in  Canada,  but  were 
intermittent  or  attenuated  farther  south.  The  fact  that 
colonial  peoples  often  multiply  inordinately  in  new  lands,  and 
there  occupy  a  territory  vastly  greater  than  that  of  the 
mother  country,  points  to  the  danger  in  such  a  generaliza- 
tion. Of  the  ten  millions  of  Jews  in  the  world,  only  a 
handful  remain  in  the  ancient  center  of  dispersion  in  Pal- 
estine, while  about  eight  millions  are  found  in  Poland  and 
the  contiguous  territories  of  western  Russia,  Roumania, 
Austria-Hungary  and  eastern  Germany.  Moreover,  history 
and  the  German  element  in  the  "Yiddish"  speech  of  the  Rus- 
sian Jews  point  to  a  secondary  center  of  dispersion  in 
the  Rhine  cities  and  Franconia,  whither  the  Jews  were  drawn 
by  the  trade  route  up  the  Rhone  Valley  in  the  third  cen- 
tury. 113 

A  more  scientific  procedure  is  to  look  for  the  early 
home  of  a  race  in  the  locality  around  which  its  people  or 
family  of  peoples  centers  in  modern  times.  Therefore  we 
place  the  cradle  of  the  negro  race  in  Africa,  rather  than 
Melanesia.  Density  often  supplies  a  test,  because  colonial 
lands  are  generally  more  sparsely  inhabited  than  the  mother 
country.  But  even  this  conclusion  fails  always  to  apply,  as 
in  the  case  of  Samos,  which  has  a  population  vastly  more 
dense  than  any  section  of  the  Grecian  mainland.  The  largest 
compact  area  including  at  once  the  greatest  density  of  popu- 
lation and  the  greatest  purity  of  race  would  more  nearly 
indicate  the  center  of  dispersion :  because  purity  of  race  is 
incompatible  with  long  migrations,  as  we  have  seen,  though 
in  the  native  seat  it  may  be  affected  by  intrusive  elemi 
When  this  purity  of  race  is  combined  with  archaic  forms  of 
language  and  culture,  as  among  the  Lithuanians  of  Aryan 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  125 

speech  among  the  Baltic  swamps,  it  may  indicate  that  the 
locality  formed  a  segregated  corner  of  the  early  center  of 
dispersion.  It  seems  essential  to  such  an  original  seat  that, 
whether  large  or  small,  it  should  be  marked  by  some  degree 
of  isolation,  as  the  condition  for  the  development  of  specific 
racial  characteristics. 

The  complexity  of  this  question  of  ethnic  origins  is  typical 
of  anthropo-geographic  problems,  typical  also  in  the  warn- 
ing which  it  gives  against  any  rigidly  systematic  method  of 
solution.  The  whole  science  of  anthropo-geography  is  as 
yet  too  young  for  hard-and-fast  rules,  and  its  subject  matter 
too  complex  for  formulas. 


NOTES    TO    CHAPTER    IV 

1.  H.  J.  Mackinder,  Britain  and  the  British  Seaa)  pp.  1?«-187.     Lon- 
don, 1904.    W.  Z.  Ripley,  The  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  306-310,  319-326. 
New  York,  1899. 

2.  Compare  observations  of  Georg  Schweinfurth,  The  Heart  of  Africa, 
Vol.  I,  pp.  312-313.     London,   1873. 

3.  Nott    and    Gliddon,    Types    of    Mankind,    p.    Ivii.      Philadelphia, 
1868. 

4.  D.  M.  Wallace,  Russia,  pp.  151-155.     New  York,  1904. 

5.  Thucydides,  Book  I,  chap.  II. 

6.  Strabo,  Book  II,  chap.  Ill,  7. 

7.  McGee  and  Thomas,  Prehistoric  North  America,  pp.  408-414,  Vol. 
XIX  of  History  of  North  America,  edited  by  T.   N.   Thorpe.     Phila- 
delphia, 1905. 

8.  Hodgkin,  Italy  and  Her  Invaders,  Vol.  II,  p.  214.     Oxford,  1892. 

9.  Sir  John  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  p.  587.     New  York,  1872. 

10.  D.   G.   Brinton,   The   American   Race,  pp.    116-119.      Philadelphia, 
1901. 

11.  O.   T.  Mason,   Primitive  Travel   and  Transportation,  pp.   249-230. 
Smithsonian  Report,  Washington,  1896. 

i  12.  Thucydides,  Book  I,  chap.  II. 

13.  Edward  A.  Ross,  Foundations  of  Sociology,  pp.  359-363,  386-389. 
New  York,  1905. 

14.  D.  G.  Brinton,  Races  and  Peoples,  pp.  73-75.     Philadelphia,  1901. 

15.  John  Richard  Green,   The  Making  of  England,  Vol.   I,  pp.  9-11, 
45-46,  52-54,  57,  62.    London,  1904. 

16.  James   Bryce,   The  Migration   of   the   Races   of   Men    Considered 
Historically,   Scottish   Geographical   Magazine,  Vol.   VIII,  pp.   400-421, 
and  Smithsonian  Seport   for   1893,  pp.   567-588. 

17.  Caesar,  De  Bella  Gallico,  Book  II,  chap.  29. 

18.  Motley,  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  Vol.  I,  p.  5.    New  York,  1883. 

19.  John    Richard    Green,    The   Making    of    England,    Vol.    I,    p.    46. 
London,  1904. 


126  THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 

20.  Hodgkin,  Italy  and  Her  Invaders,  Vol.  V,  pp.  99-101.     Oxford, 
1895. 

21.  Ibid.,  Vol.  V,  pp.  156-157. 

22.  Hodgkin,  Italy  and  Her  Invaders,  Vol.  II,  pp.  107,  195.     Oxford, 
1892. 

23.  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  219-223,  230. 

24.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  276-277.     New  York,  1899. 

25.  Hodgkin,  Italy  and  Her  Invaders,  Vol.  II,  pp.  214-219.     Oxford, 
1892. 

26.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  II,  p.  296.     London,  1896-1898. 

27.  McGee  and  Thomas,  Prehistoric  North  America,  pp.  408-412,  Vo\, 
XIX  of  History  of  North  America.     Philadelphia,  1905. 

28.  Hugh  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  858.     New  York,  1902. 

29.  Roscher,  National-Oekonomik  des  Ackerbaues,  pp.  44-48.     Stutt- 
gart, 1888. 

30.  Cyrus  Thomas,  The  Indians  of  North  America  in  Historical  Times, 
p.  261.    Vol.  II  of  History  of  North  America,  Philadelphia,  1903. 

31.  Roosevelt,  Winning  of  the  West,  Vol.  I,  pp.  134-135,  250.     New 
York,  1895.     Justin  Winsor,  The  Westward  Movement,  p.   16.     Boston, 
1899. 

32.  Eleventh  Census,  Eeport  on  the  Indians,  p.  54.    Washington,  1894. 

33.  Ibid.,  p.  531. 

34.  Hans  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  411.    New  York, 
1902-1906. 

35.  Edward  John  Payne,  History  of  the  New  World  Called  America, 
Vol.  II,  pp.  57-58.     Oxford,  1899. 

36.  //  Kings,  Chap.  XVII,  6-24. 

37.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  432-434.     New  York,  1899. 

38.  Hans  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  V,  pp.  353-354.     New 
York,  1902-1906. 

39.  Ibid.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  15. 

40.  D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer  East,  p.   247.     London,   1902. 

41.  Roosevelt,    Winning   of   the   West,    Vol.    I,    p.    248.     New    York, 
1895. 

42.  C.  C.  Royce,  The  Cherokee  Nation  of  Indians,  pp.  130-131.     Maps 
VIII  and  IX.    Fifth  Annual  Eeport  of  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  Washing- 
ton, 1887. 

43.  Albert    Gallatin,    Report    on    the    Indians    in    1836,    reprinted    in 
Eleventh  Census,  Eeport  on  the  Indians,  p.  33.     Washington,  1894. 

44.  Cyrus  Thomas,  Indians  of  North  America  in  Historical  Times,  pp. 
94,  96.     Vol.  II  of  History  of  North  America,  Philadelphia,  1903. 

45.  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  100-101. 

46.  Anatole  Leroy-Beaulieu,  The  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  Vol.  Ill,  pp. 
333-334.     New  York,  1902. 

47.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  437-438.     New  York,  1899. 

48.  D.   G.  Brinton,   The  American  Race,  pp.    115-116.     Philadelphia, 
1901. 

49.  H.  Bancroft,  The  Native  Races,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  559,  635-638.     San 
Francisco,  1886. 

50.  Cyrus  Thomas,  Indians  of  North  America  in  Historical  Times,  pp. 
381-382,  Vol.  II  of  History  of  North  America.     Philadelphia,  1903. 

51.  Eleventh  Census,  Eeport  on  the  Indians,  p.  35.    Washington,  1894. 

52.  Eleventh    Census,    Eeport    on    Population,    Vol.    I,    p.    cxxxviii. 
Washington,  1894. 

53.  Justus  Perthes,  Taschen  Atlas,  p.  38.     Gotha,  1905. 


THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES  127 

54    Hkhmond  Mayo-Smith,  Emigration  and  Immigration,  p.  24.    New 
York. 

55.  Ibid.,  pp.  79-80,   113-115. 

56.  Capt.  A.  T.  Mahan,  Influence  of  Sea  Power  upon  History,  pp.  27- 
28.     Boston,   1902. 

57.  W.    Z.   Eipley,   Races   of   Europe,   pp.   247,   272-274.      New   York, 
1899. 

58.  Cffisar,  Bella  Gallico,  Book  III,  chap.  I. 

59.  Hodgkin,  Italy  and  Her  Invaders,  Vol.  I,  Part  I,  pp.  34-43.     Ox- 
ford, 1892. 

60.  Eatzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  242,  245,  250,  257.    Lon- 
don, 1896-1898. 

61.  John  Fiske,  Discovery  of  America,  Vol.  I,  pp.  316-317.     Boston, 
1893. 

62.  Elliott  Coues,  History  of  the  Lewis  and  Clark  Expedition,  Vol.  I. 
pp.  193-198,  203-212,  240.     New  York,  1893. 

63.  Francis  Parkman,  La  Salle  and  the  Discovery  of  the  Great  West, 
pp.  39-40,  Note  2.     Boston,  1904. 

64.  George  G.   Chisholm,  Commercial   Geography,   pp.   56-57.    London, 
1204. 

65.  Herodotus,  Book  II,  60. 

66.  Encyclopedia  Britanica,   Article   Pilgrimages. 

67.  E.  Huntington,  The  Pulse  of  Asia,  p.  88.     Boston,  1907. 

68.  Boyd   Alexander,  From  the  Niger  to  the   Nile,  Vol.   II,  pp.   3-7. 
London,  1907. 

(59.  C.  A.  Sherring,  Western  Tibet  and  the  British  Borderland,  pp.  3-4, 
144-145.  280-284.     London,  1906^ 

70.  Hans  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  I,  pp.  189-191.     Map  p. 
190.     New  York  and  London,  1902-1906. 

71.  J.   W.   Powell,   Map   of   Linguistic   Stocks   of   American    Indians, 
Annual  Report  of  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  Vol.  VII. 

72.  Archibald   Little,   The   Far    East,    Ethnological   Map,   p.    8.      Ox- 
ford, 1905. 

73.  Census  of  India,  1901,  Genera!  Report  by  H.  H.  Risley  and  E.  A. 
Gait,  Vol.  I,  Part  I,  pp.  500-504;  and  Ethnographic  Appendices  by  H.  H. 
Risley,   Vol.  I,  map,  p.  60.     Calcutta,  1903.     P.  Vidal  de  la  Blache,  Le 
Peuple  de  I'Inde,  d'apres  la  serie  des  recensements,  pp.  431-434,  Annales 
de  Geographic ,  Vol.  XV.     Paris,  1906. 

74.  Hans  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  422,  424,  434- 
436.     New  York,  1902-1906. 

75.  D.  Livingstone,  Missionary  Travels,  pp.  97-102.     New  York,  1858. 

76.  James  Bryce,  Migrations  of  the  Races  of  Men  Considered  Histor- 
ically,  Scottish    Geographical   Magazine,   Vol.   VIII,   pp.   400-421,   May, 
1892. 

77.  Justus  Perthes,  Taschen  Atlas,  p.  78.     Gotha,  1905. 

78.  Ibid.,  p.  80. 

79.  Hugh  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  878.     New  York,  1902. 

80.  Hans  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  I,  pp.   189-191.     New 
York,  1902-1906. 

81.  Hodgkin,  Italy  and  Her  Invaders,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  23-27,  38-42,  63-68, 
83-87.     Oxford,  1896. 

82.  McGee  and  Thomas,  Prehistoric  North  America,  Chap.  XXI,  Vol. 
XIX  of  History  of  North  America,  Philadelphia,  1905. 

83.  Ibid.,  pp.  83,  87,  Map  of  Migrations,  p.  3. 

84.  Archibald  Little,  The  Far  East,  pp.  34-38.     Oxford,  1905. 


128  THE  MOVEMENTS  OF  PEOPLES 

85.  Strabo,  Book  VIII,  chap.  I,  2. 

86.  Heinrich  Earth,  Travels  in  North  and  Central  Africa,  Vol.  II,  p. 
648.    New  York,  1857. 

87.  Joseph  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  pp.  104-105.     London,  1903. 

88.  E.  F.  im  Thurn,  Among  the  Indians  of  Guiana,  pp.  167-171,  202- 
207.     London,  1883. 

89.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  p.  237.    New  York,  1899. 

90.  Ibid.,  p.  469. 

91.  H.  Earth,  Human  Society  in  Northern  Central  Africa,  Journal  of 
the  Soyal  Geog.  Society,  Vol.  XXX,  p.  116.     London,  1860. 

92.  Moritz  Wagner,  Die  Entstehung  der  Arten  durch  raumliche  Bonder- 
ung.     Basel,   1889. 

93.  H.  W.  Conn,  The  Method  of  Evolution,  pp.  282-295.     New  York, 
1900. 

94.  McGee  and  Thomas,  Prehistoric  North  America,  pp.  418,  424,  Vol. 
XIX  of  History  of  North  America.   Philadelphia,  1905. 

95.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  II,  pp.  280-283.     London,  1896- 
1898. 

96.  Csesar,  Bella  Gallico,  Book  II,  chap.  IV. 

97.  H.  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  32-33.    New  York 
1902-1906. 

98.  Hodgkin,  Italy  and  Her  Invaders,  Vol.  I,  Part  I,  pp.  75,  81,  82. 
Oxford,  1895. 

99.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  34,  341-342.     New  York,  J899 

100.  H.  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  400,  417.     New 
York,  1902-1906. 

101.  A.  C.  Haddon,  The  Study  of  Man,  p.  xir.     New  York  and  Lon- 
don, 1898. 

102.  James  Bryce,  Migrations  of  the  Races  of  Men  Considered  Histor- 
ically, Scottish  Geographical  Magazine,  Vol.   VIII,  pp.  400-421.    May, 
1892. 

103.  Eleventh  Census,  Eeport  on  the  Indians,  pp.  34-35.     Washington, 
1894. 

104.  H.  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  42.     New  York, 
1902-1906. 

105.  Ratzel,    History    of    Mankind,    Vol.    II,    pp.    279-283.      London. 
1896-98. 

106.  Jerome  Dowd,  The  Negro  Races,  Vol.  I,  pp.  47-48,  61  62.     New 
York,  1907. 

107.  Sweden,  Its  People  and  Its  Industries,  p.  93.    Edited  by  G.  Suncl- 
barg,  Stockholm,  1904. 

108.  Sir  John  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  pp.  589-593.     New   York, 
1872. 

109.  G.   P.  Marsh,  The  Earth  as  Modified  by  Human  Action.     New 
York,  1877. 

110.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  261-267.     New  York,  1899. 

111.  Ibid.,  pp.  475-485. 

112.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  II,  pp.  402-405.     London,  IV'Jo- 
1898. 

113.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  ''.71  372.     Map.  v    374.     V?v 
York,  1899. 


I 

\  >v^.     ft    1^  »* 

.     '. 


J       „  -     rjf.1      -. 

\  •• 

CHAPTER  V 
GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 

THE  location  of  a  country  or  people  is  always  the  supreme  Importance 
geographical  fact  in  its  history.  It  outweighs  every  other  ?'  geograph- 
single  geographic  force.  All  that  has  been  said  of  Russia's  ^ 
vast  area,  of  her  steppes  and  tundra  wastes,  of  her  impotent 
seaboard  on  land-locked  basins  or  ice-bound  coasts,  of  her 
poverty  of  mountains  and  wealth  of  rivers,  fades  into  the 
background  before  her  location  on  the  border  of  Asia.  From 
her  defeat  by  the  Tartar  hordes  in  1224  to  her  attack  upon 
the  Mongolian  rulers  of  the  Bosporus  in  1877,  and  her  recent 
struggle  with  Japan,  most  of  her  wars  have  been  waged 
against  Asiatics.  Location  made  her  the  bulwark  of  Cen- 
tral Europe  against  Asiatic  invasion  and  the  apostle  of  West- 
ern civilization  to  the  heart  of  Asia.  If  this  position  on  the 
outskirts  of  Europe,  remote  from  its  great  centers  of  develop- 
ment, has  made  Russia  only  partially  accessible  to  European 
culture  and,  furthermore,  has  subjected  her  to  the  retarding 
ethnic  and  social  influences  emanating  from  her  Asiatic  neigh- 
bors,1 and  if  the  rough  tasks  imposed  by  her  frontier  situa- 
tion have  hampered  her  progress,  these  are  all  the  limitations 
of  her  geographical  location,  limitations  which  not  even  the 
advantage  of  her  vast  area  has  been  able  to  outweigh. 

Area  itself,  important  as  it  is,  must  yield  to  location.  Lo- 
cation may  mean  only  a  single  spot,  and  yet  from  this  spot 
powerful  influences  may  radiate.  No  one  thinks  of  size  when 
mention  is  made  of  Rome  or  Athens,  of  Jerusalem  or  Mecca, 
of  Gibraltar  or  Port  Arthur.  Iceland  and  Greenland  guided 
early  Norse  ships  to  the  continent  of  America,  as  the  Cana- 
ries and  Antilles  did  those  of  Spain ;  but  the  location  of  the 
smaller  islands  in  sub-tropical  latitudes  and  in  the  course  of 
the  northeast  trade-winds  made  them  determine  the  first 
permanent  path  across  the  western  seas. 

The  historical  significance  of  many  small  peoples,  and  the 


* 

130  GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 

historical  insignificance  of  many  big  ones  even  to  the  nil 
point,  is  merely  the  expression  of  the  preponderant  impor- 
tance of  location  over  area.  The  Phoenicians,  from  their  nar- 
row strip  of  coast  at  the  foot  of  Mount  Lebanon,  were  dis- 
seminators of  culture  over  the  whole  Mediterranean.  Hol- 
land owed  her  commercial  and  maritime  supremacy,  from  the 
thirteenth  to  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  to  her 
exceptional  position  at  the  mouth  of  the  great  Rhine  highway 
and  at  the  southern  angle  of  the  North  Sea  near  the  entrance 
to  the  unexploited  regions  of  the  Baltic.  The  Iroquois  tribes, 
located  where  the  Mohawk  Valley  opened  a  way  through  the 
Appalachian  barrier  between  the  Hudson  River  and  Lake 
Ontario,  occupied  both  in  the  French  wars  and  in  the  Revo- 
lution a  strategic  position  which  gave  them  a  power  and  im- 
portance out  of  all  proportion  to  their  numbers. 

Location  often  assumes  a  fictitious  political  value,  due  to 
a  combination  of  political  interests.  The  Turkish  power  owes 
its  survival  on  the  soil  of  Europe  to-day  wholly  to  its  position 
on  the  Bosporus.  Holland  owes  the  integrity  of  her  king- 
dom, and  Roumania  that  of  hers,  to  their  respective  locations 
at  the  mouths  of  the  Rhine  and  the  Danube,  because  the  in- 
terest of  western  Europe  demands  that  these  two  important 
arteries  of  commerce  should  be  held  by  powers  too  weak  ever 
to  tie  them  up.  The  same  principle  has  guaranteed  the  neu- 
trality of  Switzerland,  whose  position  puts  it  in  control  of 
the  passes  of  the  Central  Alps  from  Savoy  to  the  Tyrol ; 
and,  more  recently,  that  of  the  young  state  of  Panama, 
through  which  the  Isthmian  Canal  is  to  pass. 

Content  Geographical  location  necessarily  includes  the  idea  of  the 

size  and  form  of  a  country.  Even  the  most  general  state- 
ment of  the  zonal  and  interoceanic  situation  of  Canada,  the 
United  States,  Mexico,  and  the  Russian  Empire,  indicates  the 
area  and  contour  of  their  territories.  This  is  still  more 
conspicuously  the  case  with  naturally  defined  regions,  such  as 
island  and  peninsula  countries.  But  location  includes  a  com- 
plex of  yet  larger  and  more  potent  relations  which  go  with 
mere  attachment  to  this  or  that  continent,  or  to  one  or 
another  side  of  a  continent.  Every  part  of  the  world  gives 
to  its  lands  and  its  people  some  of  its  own  qualities ;  and  so 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  131 

again  every  part  of  this  part.  Arabia,  India  and  Farther 
India,  spurs  of  the  Asiatic  land-mass,  have  had  and  will 
always  have  a  radically  different  ethnic  and  political  history 
from  Greece,  Italy  and  Spain,  the  corresponding  peninsulas 
of  Europe,  because  the  histories  of  these  two  groups  are 
bound  up  in  their  respective  continents.  The  idea  of  a  Eu- 
ropean state  has  a  different  content  from  that  of  an  Asiatic, 
or  North  American  or  African  state ;  it  includes  a  different 
race  or  combination  of  races,  different  social  and  economic 
development,  different  political  ideals.  Location,  therefore, 
means  climate  and  plant  life  at  one  end  of  the  scale,  civiliza- 
tion and  political  status  at  the  other. 

This  larger  conception  of  location  brings  a  correspond-  Intercon- 
ingly  larger  conception  of  environment,  which  affords  the  tinental 
solution  of  many  otherwise  hopeless  problems  of  anthropo-  l°cation. 
geography.  It  is  embodied  in  the  law  that  the  influences  of 
a  land  upon  its  people  spring  not  only  from  the  physical 
features  of  the  land  itself,  but  also  from  a  wide  circle  of  lands 
into  which  it  has  been  grouped  by  virtue  of  its  location. 
Almost  every  geographical  interpretation  of  the  ancient 
and  modern  history  of  Greece  has  been  inadequate,  because  it 
has  failed  sufficiently  to  emphasize  the  most  essential  factor 
in  this  history,  namely,  Greece's  location  at  the  threshold  of 
the  Orient.  This  location  has  given  to  Greek  history  a 
strong  Asiatic  color.  It  comes  out  in  the  accessibility  of 
Greece  to  ancient  Oriental  civilization  and  commerce,  and  is 
conspicuous  in  every  period  from  the  Argonautic  Expedition 
to  the  achievement  of  independence  in  1882  and  the  recent 
efforts  for-'the  liberation  of  Crete.  This  outpost  location 
before  the  Mediterranean  portals  of  the  vast  and  arid  plains 
of  southwestern  Asia,  exposed  to  every  tide  of  migration  or 
conquest  sent  out  by  those  hungry  lands,  had  in  it  always  an 
element  of  weakness.  In  comparison  with  the  shadow  of 
Asia,  which  constantly  overhung  the  Greek  people  and  from 
1401  to  1832  enveloped  them,  only  secondary  importance 
can  be  attributed  to  advantageous  local  conditions  as  factors 
in  Greek  history. 

It  is   a  similar  intercontinental  location  in  the  isthmian 
region  between  the  Mediterranean  on  the  west  and  the  ancient 


132 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 


Natural 
versus 
vicinal  lo- 
cation. 


maritime  routes  of  the  Red  Sea  and  Persian  Gulf  on  the 
east,  which  gave  to  Pho?nicia  the  office  of  middleman  between 
the  Orient  and  Occident,2  and  predestined  its  conquest, 
now  by  the  various  Asiatic  powers  of  Mesopotamia,  now  by 
the  Pharaohs  of  Egypt,  now  by  European  Greeks  and 
Romans,  now  by  a  succession  of  Asiatic  peoples,  till  to-day 
we  find  it  incorporated  in  the  Asiatic-European  Empire  of 
Turkey.  Proximity  to  Africa  has  closely  allied  Spain  to  the 
southern  continent  in  flora,  fauna,  and  ethnic  stock.  The 
long-headed,  brunette  Mediterranean  race  occupies  the 
Iberian  Peninsula  and  the  Berber  territory  of  northwest 
Africa.  3  This  community  of  race  is  also  reflected  in  the 
political  union  of  the  two  districts  for  long  periods,  first 
under  the  Carthaginians,  then  the  Romans,  who  secured 
Hispania  by  a  victory  on  African  soil,  and  finally  by  the 
Saracens.  This  same  African  note  in  Spanish  history  recurs 
to-day  in  Spain's  interest  in  Morocco  and  the  influence  in 
Moroccan  affairs  yielded  her  by  France  and  Germany  at  the 
Algeciras  convention  in  1905,  and  in  her  ownership  of 
Ceuta  and  five  smaller  presidios  on  the  Moroccan  coast. 
Compare  Portugal's  former  ownership  of  Tangier. 

In  contradistinction  to  continental  and  intercontinental 
location,  anthropo-geography  recognizes  two  other  narrower 
meanings  of  the  term.  The  innate  mobility  of  the  human  race, 
due  primarily  to  the  eternal  food-quest  and  increase  of  num- 
bers, leads  a  people  to  spread  out  over  a  territory  till  they 
reach  the  barriers  which  nature  has  set  up,  or  meet  the 
frontiers  of  other  tribes  and  nations.  Their  habitat  or  their 
specific  geographic  location  is  thus  defined  by  natural  fea- 
tures of  mountain,  desert  and  sea,  or  by  the  neighbors  whom 
they  are  unable  to  displace,  or  more  often  by  both. 

A  people  has,  therefore,  a  twofold  location,  an  immediate 
one,  based  upon  their  actual  territory,  and  a  mediate  or 
vicinal  one,  growing  out  of  its  relations  to  the  countries  nearest 
them.  The  first  is  a  question  of  the  land  under  their  feet; 
the  other,  of  the  neighbors  about  them.  The  first  or  natural 
location  embodies  the  complex  of  local  geographic  conditions 
which  furnish  the  basis  for  their  tribal  or  national  existence. 
This  basis  may  be  a  peninsula,  island,  archipelago,  an  oasis, 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  133 

an  arid  steppe,  a  mountain  system,  or  a  fertile  lowland.  The 
stronger  the  vicinal  location,  the  more  dependent  is  the  peo- 
ple upon  the  neighboring  states,  but  the  more  potent  the  in- 
fluence which  it  can,  under  certain  circumstances,  exert  upon 
them.  Witness  Germany  in  relation  to  Holland,  France, 
Austria  and  Poland.  The  stronger  the  natural  location,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  more  independent  is  the  people  and  the 
more  strongly  marked  is  the  national  character.  This  is 
exemplified  in  the  people  of  mountain  lands  like  Switzerland, 
Abyssinia  and  Nepal ;  of  peninsulas  like  Korea,  Spain  and 
Scandinavia ;  and  of  islands  like  England  and  Japan.  To- 
day we  stand  amazed  at  that  strong  primordial  brand  of  the 
Japanese  character  which  nothing  can  blur  or  erase. 

Clearly  defined  natural  locations,  in  which  barriers  of  Naturally 
mountains  and  sea  draw  the  boundaries  and  guarantee  some  defined 
degree  of  isolation,  tend  to  hold  their  people  in  a  calm  em-  l°cati°n- 
brace,  to  guard  them  against  outside  interference  and  infu- 
sion of  foreign  blood,  and  thus  to  make  them  develop  the 
national  genius  in  such  direction  as  the  local  geographic 
conditions  permit.  In  the  unceasing  movements  which  have 
made  up  most  of  the  historic  and  prehistoric  life  of  the  human 
race,  in  their  migrations  and  counter-migrations,  their  in- 
cursions, retreats,  and  expansions  over  the  face  of  the  earth, 
vast  unfenced  areas,  like  the  open  lowlands  of  Russia  and  the 
grasslands  of  Africa,  present  the  picture  of  a  great  thorough- 
fare swept  by  pressing  throngs.  Other  regions,  more  se- 
cluded, appear  as  quiet  nooks,  made  for  a  temporary  halt 
or  a  permanent  rest.  Here  some  part  of  the  passing  human 
flow  is  caught  as  in  a  vessel  and  held  till  it  crystallizes  into 
a  nation.  These  are  the  conspicuous  areas  of  race  charac- 
terization. The  development  of  the  various  ethnic  and  polit- 
ical offspring  of  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  naturally  defined 
areas  of  Italy,  the  Iberian  Peninsula,  and  France  illustrates 
the  process  of  national  differentiation  which  goes  on  in  such 
secluded  locations. 

A  marked  influence  upon  this  development  is  generally 
ascribed  to  the  protection  afforded  by  such  segregated  dis- 
tricts. But  protection  alone  is  only  a  negative  force  in  the 
life  of  a  people ;  it  leaves  them  free  to  develop  in  their  own 


134  GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 

way,  but  does  not  say  what  that  way  shall  be.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  fact  that  such  a  district  embraces  a  certain  number 
of  geographic  features,  and  encompasses  them  by  obstruc- 
tive boundaries,  is  of  immense  historical  importance;  because 
this  restriction  leads  to  the  concentration  of  the  national 
powers,  to  the  more  thorough  utilization  of  natural  advan- 
tages, both  racial  and  geographical,  and  thereby  to  the 
growth  of  an  historical  individuality.  Nothing  robs  the  his- 
torical process  of  so  much  of  its  greatness  or  weakens  so  much 
its  effects  as  its  dispersion  over  a  wide,  boundless  area.  This 
was  the  disintegrating  force  which  sapped  the  strength  of  the 
French  colonies  in  America.  The  endless  valleys  of  the  St. 
Lawrence  and  the  Mississippi  and  the  alluring  fur  trade 
tempted  them  to  an  expansion  that  was  their  political  and 
economic  undoing.  Russia's  history  illustrates  the  curse  of 
a  distant  horizon.  On  the  other  hand,  out  of  a  restricted 
geographical  base,  with  its  power  to  concentrate  and  inten- 
sify the  national  forces,  grew  Rome  and  Greece,  England  and 
Japan,  ancient  Peru  and  the  Thirteen  Colonies  of  America. 
Vicinal  If  even  the  most  detached  and  isolated  of  these  natural  1<>- 

location.  cations  be  examined,  its  people  will,  nevertheless,  reveal  a 
transitional  character,  intermediate  between  those  of  its 
neighbors,  because  from  these  it  has  borrowed  both  ethnic 
stock  and  culture.  Great  Britain  is  an  island,  but  its  vicinal 
location  groups  it  with  the  North  Sea  family  of  people.  Even 
in  historic  times  it  has  derived  ancient  Belgian  stock,  Roman, 
Anglo-Saxon,  Danish  and  Scandinavian  from  the  long  semi- 
circle of  nearby  continental  hinds,  which  have  likewise  con- 
tributed so  much  to  the  civilization  of  the  island.  Similarly. 
Japan  traces  the  sources  of  its  population  to  the  north  of 
Asia  by  way  of  the  island  of  Sakhalin,  to  the  west  through 
Korea,  and  to  the  Malay  district  of  the  south,  whence  the 
Kuro  Siwa  has  swept  stragglers  to  the  shores  of  Kiu-siu. 
Like  England,  Japan  also  has  drawn  its  civilization  from  its 
neighbors,  and  then,  under  the  isolating  influence  of  its  local 
environment,  has  individualized  both  race  and  culture.  Here 
we  have  the  interplay  of  the  forces  of  natural  and  vicinal 
location. 

A  people   situated   between    two   other   peoples    form   an 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  135 

ethnic  and  cultural  link  between  the  two.  The  transitional 
type  is  as  familiar  in  anthropo-geography  as  in  biology. 
The  only  exception  is  found  in  the  young  intrusion  of  a 
migrating  or  conquering  people,  like  that  of  the  Hungarians 
and  Turks  in  southeastern  Europe,  and  of  the  Berger  Tua- 
regs  and  Fulbes  among  the  negroes  of  western  Sudan ; 
or  of  a  colonizing  people,  like  that  of  the  Russians  in  Mon- 
golian Siberia  and  of  Europeans  among  the  aborigines  of 
South  Africa.  Even  in  these  instances  race  amalgamation 
tends  to  take  place  along  the  frontiers,  as  was  the  case  in 
Latin  America  and  as  occurs  to-day  in  Alaska  and  northern 
Canada,  where  the  "squaw  man"  is  no  rarity.  The  assimila- 
tion of  culture,  at  least  in  a  superficial  sense,  may  be  yet  more 
rapid,  especially  where  hard  climatic  conditions  force  the 
interloper  to  imitate  the  life  of  the  native.  The  industrial 
and  commercial  Hollander,  when  transplanted  to  the  dry 
grasslands  of  South  Africa,  became  pastoral  like  the  native 
Kaffirs.  The  French  voyageur  of  Canada  could  scarcely 
be  distinguished  from  the  Indian  trapper;  occupation,  food, 
dress,  and  spouse  were  the  same.  Only  a  lighter  tint  of  skin 
distinguished  the  half-breed  children  of  the  Frenchman.  The 
settlers  of  the  early  Trans-Allegheny  commonwealths,  at  least 
for  a  generation  or  two,  showed  little  outward  difference  in 
mode  of  life  from  that  of  the  savage  community  among  which 
they  dwelt.  4 

The  more  alike  the  components  of  such  a  vicinal  group  of  Vicinal 
people,  the  easier,  freer  and  more  effective  will  be  the  medi-  &°up*  °* 
ating  function  of  the  central  one.   Germany  has  demonstrated  ,. 
this  in  her  long  history  as  intermediary  between  the  nations  race  ajl(j 
of  southeastern  and  western   Europe.      The  people   of  Po-  culture, 
land,  occupying  a  portion  of  the  Baltic  slope  of  northern 
Europe,  fended  by  no  natural  barriers  from  their  eastern  and 
western  neighbors,  long  constituted   a  transition   form  be- 
tween the  two.     Though  affiliated  with  Russia  in  point  of 
language,  the  Poles  are  Occidental  in  their  religion ;  and  their 
head-form  resembles  that  of  northern  Germany  rather  than 
that  of  Russia.  5     The  country  belongs  to  western  Europe 
in  the  density  of  its  population  (74  to  the  square  kilometer 
or  190  to  the  square  mile),  which  is  quadruple  that  of  re- 


136 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 


Thalassic 

vicinal 

location. 


maining  European  Russia,  and  also  in  its  industrial  and 
social  development.  The  partition  of  Poland  among  the 
three  neighboring  powers  was  the  final  expression  of  its  in- 
termediate location  and  character.  8  One  part  was  joined 
politically  to  the  Slav-German  western  border  of  Russia, 
and  another  to  the  German-Slav  border  of  Germany,  while 
the  portion  that  fell  to  the  Austrian  Empire  simply  extended 
the  northern  Slav  area  of  that  country  found  in  Bohemia, 
Moravia,  and  the  Slovak  border  of  Hungary.  [Map  page  223.] 

If  the  intermediate  people  greatly  differs  in  race  or 
civilization  from  both  neighbors,  it  exercises  and  receives 
slight  influence.  The  Mongols  of  Central  Asia,  between 
China  on  one  side  and  Persia  and  India  on  the  other,  have 
been  poor  vehicles  for  the  exchange  of  culture  between  these 
two  great  districts.  The  Hungarians,  located  between  the 
Roumanians  and  Germans  on  the  east  and  west,  Slovaks  and 
Croatians  on  the  north  and  south,  have  helped  little  to  recon- 
cile race  differences  in  the  great  empire  of  the  Danube. 

The  unifying  effect  of  vicinal  location  is  greatly  enhanced 
if  the  neighboring  people  are  grouped  about  an  enclosed  sea 
which  affords  an  easy  highway  for  communication.  The  in- 
tegrating force  of  such  a  basin  will  often  overcome  the  disin- 
tegrating force  of  race  antagonisms.  The  Roman  Empire  in 
the  Mediterranean  was  able  to  evolve  an  effective  centralized 
government  and  to  spread  one  culture  over  the  neighboring 
shores,  despite  great  variety  of  nationality  and  language 
and  every  degree  of  cultural  development.  A  certain  similar- 
ity of  natural  conditions,  climatic  and  otherwise,  from  the 
Iberian  Peninsula  to  the  borders  of  the  Syrian  desert,  also 
aided  in  the  process  of  amalgamation. 

Where  similarity  of  race  already  forms  a  basis  for  con- 
geniality, such  circumthalassic  groups  display  the  highest 
degree  of  interactive  influence.  These  contribute  to  a  further 
blending  of  population  and  unification  of  culture,  by  which 
the  whole  circle  of  the  enclosing  lands  tends  to  approach  one 
standard  of  civilization.  This  was  the  history  of  the  Baltic 
coast  from  the  thirteenth  to  the  sixteenth  centuries,  when  the 
German  Hansa  distributed  the  material  products  of  Europe's 
highest  civilization  from  Russian  Novgorod  to  Norway.  The 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  137 

North  Sea  group,  first  under  the  leadership  of  Holland, 
later  under  England's  guidance,  became  a  single  community 
of  advancing  culture,  which  was  a  later  reflection  of  the 
early  community  of  race  stretching  from  the  Faroe  and  Shet- 
land Islands  to  the  Rhine  and  the  Elbe.  This  same  process 
has  been  going  on  for  ages  about  the  marginal  basins  of 
eastern  Asia,  the  Yellow  and  Japan  Seas.  Community  of 
race  and  culture  stamps  China,  Korea  and  Japan.  A  general 
advance  in  civilization  under  the  leadership  of  Japan,  the 
England  of  the  East,  now  inaugurates  the  elevation  of  the  r^ 

whole  group. 

An  even  closer  connection  exists  between  adjoining  peo-  Comple- 
ples  who  are  united  by  ties  of  blood  and  are  further  made  men^ar7 
economically  dependent  upon  one  another,  because  of  a  con- 
trast in  the  physical  conditions  and,  therefore,  in  the  products 
of  their  respective  territories.  Numerous  coast  and  inland 
tribes,  pastoral  and  agricultural  tribes  are  united  because 
they  are  mutually  necessary.  In  British  Columbia  and 
Alaska  the  fishing  Indians  of  the  seaboard  long  held  a  definite 
commercial  relation  to  the  hunting  tribes  of  the  interior,  selling 
them  the  products  and  wares  of  the  coast,  while  monopolizing 
their  market  for  the  inland  furs.  Such  was  the  position  of  the 
Ugalentz  tribe  of  Tlingits  near  the  mouth  of  the  Copper 
River  in  relation  to  the  up-stream  Athapascans ;  of  the  Kinik 
tribe  at  the  head  of  Cook's  Inlet  in  relation  to  the  inland 
Atnas, 7  of  the  Chilcats  of  Chilkoot  Inlet  to  the  mountain 
Tinnehs.  Similarly,  the  hunting  folk  of  the  Kalahari  Desert 
in  South  Africa  attach  themselves  to  influential  tribesmen  of 
the  adjacent  Bechuana  grasslands,  in  order  to  exchange  the 
skins  of  the  desert  animals  for  spears,  knives,  and  tobacco.  8 
Fertile  agricultural  lands  adjoining  pastoral  regions  of 
deserts  and  steppes  have  in  all  times  drawn  to  their  border 
markets  the  mounted  plainsmen,  bringing  the  products  of 
their  herds  to  exchange  for  grain ;  and  in  all  times  the  abun- 
dance of  their  green  fields  has  tempted  their  ill-fed  neighbors 
to  conquest,  so  that  the  economic  bond  becomes  a  pre- 
liminary to  a  political  bond  and  an  ethnic  amalgamation 
growing  out  of  this  strong  vicinal  location.  The  forest  lands 
of  Great  Russia  supplement  the  grain-bearing  Black  Lands 


138 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 


Types  of 
location. 


Continuous 
and 

scattered 
location. 


of  Little  Russia;  the  two  are  united  through  geographico- 
economic  conditions,  which  would  not  permit  an  independent 
existence  to  the  smaller,  weaker  section  of  the  south,  ever 
open  to  hostile  invasion  from  Asia.  9 

Leaving  now  the  ethnic  and  economic  ties  which  may 
strengthen  the  cohesive  power  of  such  vicinal  grouping,  and 
considering  only  its  purely  geographic  aspects,  we  distinguish 
the  following  types: 

I.  Central  location.      Examples:     The   Magyars   in   the 
Danube  Valley;  the  Iroquois  Indians  on  the  Mohawk  River 
and  the  Finger  Lakes;  Russia  from  the   10th  to  the   18th 
century;  Poland  from  1000  to  its  final  partition  in  1795; 
Bolivia,  Switzerland,  and  Afghanistan. 

II.  Peripheral  location:  Ancient  Phoenicia;  Greek  colonies 
in  Asia  Minor  and  southern  Italy ;  the  Roman  Empire  at  the 
accession  of  Augustus;  the  Thirteen  Colonies  in  1750;  island 
and  peninsula  lands. 

III.  Scattered  location :     English  and  French  settlements 
in  America  prior  to  1700;  Indians  in  the  United  States  and 
the   Kaffirs   in    South   Africa;   Portuguese   holdings   in    the 
Orient,  and  French  in  India. 

IV.  Location  in   a   related  series:     Oasis  states   grouped 
along  desert  routes  ;  islands  along  great  marine  routes. 

All  peoples  in  their  geographical  distribution  tend  to  fol- 
low a  social  and  political  law  of  gravitation,  in  accordance 
with  which  members  of  the  same  tribe  or  race  gather  around  a 
common  center  or  occupy  a  continuous  stretch  of  territory, 
as  compactly  as  their  own  economic  status,  and  the  physical 
conditions  of  climate  and  soil  will  permit.  This  is  characteris- 
tic of  all  mature  and  historically  significant  peoples  who  have 
risen  to  sedentary  life,  maintained  their  hold  on  a  given  ter- 
ritory, and,  with  increase  of  population,  have  widened  their 
boundaries.  The  nucleus  of  such  a  people  may  be  situated 
somewhere  in  the  interior  of  a  continent,  and  with  growing 
strength  it  may  expand  in  every  direction  ;  or  it  may  originate 
on  some  advantageous  inlet  of  the  sea  and  spread  thence  up 
and  down  the  coast,  till  the  people  have  possessed  themselves 
of  a  long-drawn  hem  of  land  and  used  this  peripheral  location 
to  intercept  the  trade  between  their  back  country  and  the  sea. 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  139 

These  are  the  two  types  of  continuous  location.  In  contrast 
to  them,  a  discontinuous  or  scattered  location  characterizes 
the  sparse  distribution  of  primitive  hunting  and  pastoral 
tribes ;  or  the  shattered  fragments  of  a  conquered  people, 
whose  territory  has  been  honeycombed  by  the  land  appro- 
priation of  the  victors ;  or  a  declining,  moribund  peo- 
ple, who,  owing  to  bad  government,  poor  economic  methods, 
and  excessive  competition  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  have 
shrunk  to  mere  patches.  As  a  favorable  symptom,  scat- 
tered location  regularly  marks  the  healthy  growth  of  an  ex- 
panding people,  who  throw  out  here  and  there  detached 
centers  of  settlement  far  beyond  the  compact  frontier,  and 
fix  these  as  the  goal  for  the  advance  of  their  boundary.  It 
is  also  a  familiar  feature  of  maritime  commercial  expan- 
sion, which  is  guided  by  no  territorial  ambition  but  merely 
aims  to  secure  widely  distributed  trading  stations  at  favor- 
able coast  points,  in  order  to  make  the  circle  of  commerce  as 
ample  and  resourceful  as  possible.  But  this  latter  form  of 
scattered  location  is  not  permanently  sound.  Back  of  it  lies 
the  short-sighted  policy  of  the  middleman  nation,  which  makes 
wholly  inadequate  estimate  of  the  value  of  land,  and  is  con- 
tent with  an  ephemeral  prosperity. 

A  broad  territorial  base  and  security  of  possession  are  the  Central 
guarantees  of  national  survival.  The  geographic  conditions  versus  peri- 
which  favor  one  often  operate  against  the  other.  Peripheral  Ph^ral  lo~ 
location  means  a  narrow  base  but  a  protected  frontier  along 
the  sea;  central  location  means  opportunity  for  widening 
the  territory,  but  it  also  means  danger.  A  state  embedded 
in  the  heart  of  a  continent  has,  if  strong,  every  prospect 
of  radial  expansion  and  the  exercise  of  wide-spread  in- 
fluence ;  but  if  weak,  its  very  existence  is  imperilled,  because 
it  is  exposed  to  encroachments  on  every  side.  A  central  loca- 
tion minus  the  bulwark  of  natural  boundaries  enabled  the 
kingdom  of  Poland  to  be  devoured  piecemeal  by  its  voracious 
neighbors.  The  kingdom  of  Burgundy,  always  a  state  of 
fluctuating  boundaries  and  shifting  allegiances,  fell  at  last  a 
victim  to  its  central  location,  and  saw  its  name  obliterated 
from  the  map.  Hungary,  which,  in  the  year  1000,  occupied 
a  restricted  inland  location  on  the  middle  Danube,  by  the 


140  GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 

14th  century  broke  through  the  barriers  of  its  close-hug- 
ging neighbors,  and  stretched  its  boundaries  from  the  Adria- 
tic to  the  Euxine ;  two  hundred  years  later  its  territory  con- 
tracted to  a  fragment  before  the  encroachments  of  the  Turks, 
but  afterwards  recovered  in  part  its  old  dimensions.  Ger- 
many has,  in  common  with  the  little  Sudanese  state  of  Wadai, 
an  influential  and  dangerous  position.  A  central  location 
in  the  Sudan  has  made  Wadai  accessible  to  the  rich  caravan 
trade  from  Tripoli  and  Barca  on  the  north,  from  the  great 
market  town  of  Kano  in  Sokoto  on  the  west,  and  from  the 
Nile  Valley  and  Red  Sea  on  the  east.  But  the  little  state 
has  had  to  fight  for  its  life  against  the  aggressions  of  its 
•western  rival  Bornu  and  its  eastern  neighbor  Darfur.  And 
now  more  formidable  enemies  menace  it  in  the  French,  who 
have  occupied  the  territory  between  it  and  Bornu,  and  the 
English,  who  have  already  caught  Darfur  in  the  dragnet 
of  the  Egyptian  Sudan.  10 

Danger  Germany,   crowded    in    among   three    powerful    neighbors 

of  central  like  France,  Russia,  and  Austria,  has  had  no  choice  about 
location.  maintaining  a  strong  standing  army  and  impregnable  fron- 
tier defenses.  The  location  of  the  Central  European  states 
between  the  Baltic  and  the  Balkans  has  exposed  them  to  all 
the  limitations  and  dangers  arising  from  a  narrow  circle  of 
land  neighbors.  Moreover,  the  diversified  character  of  the 
area,  its  complex  mountain  systems,  and  diverging  river 
courses  have  acted  as  disintegrating  forces  which  have  pre- 
vented the  political  concentration  necessary  to  repel  inter- 
ference from  without.  The  Muscovite  power,  which  had  its 
beginning  in  a  modest  central  location  about  the  sources  of 
the  Dwina,  Dnieper  and  Volga,  was  aided  by  the  physical 
unity  of  its  unobstructed  plains,  which  facilitated  political 
combination.  Hence,  on  every  side  it  burst  through  its  en- 
compassing neighbors  and  stretched  its  boundaries  to  the  un- 
tenanted  frontier  of  the  sea.  Central  location  was  the  un- 
doing of  the  Transvaal  Republic.  Its  efforts  to  expand  to 
the  Indian  Ocean  were  blocked  by  its  powerful  British  rival 
at  every  point — at  Delagoa  Bay  in  1875  by  treaty  with  Por- 
tugal, at  Santa  Lucia  Bay  in  1884,  and  through  Swaziland 
in  1894.  The  Orange  Free  State  was  maimed  in  the  same 


141 

way  when,  in  1868,  she  tried  to  stretch  out  an  arm  through 
Basutoland  to  the  sea.11  Here  even  weak  neighbors  were  ef- 
fective to  curtail  the  seaward  growth  of  these  inland  states, 
because  they  were  made  the  tools  of  one  strong,  rapacious 
neighbor.  A  central  position  teaches  always  the  lesson  of 
vigilance  and  preparedness  for  hostilities,  as  the  Boer  equip- 
ment in  1899,  the  military  organization  of  Germany,  and  the 
bristling  fortresses  on  the  Swiss  Alpine  passes  prove. 

How  intimate  and  necessary  are  the  relations  between  cen-  Mutual  re- 
tral  and  peripheral  location  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  all  ktions  be~ 
states  strive  to  combine  the  two.  In  countries  like  Norway,  center  and 
France,  Spain,  Japan,  Korea  and  Chile,  peripheral  loca-  periphery, 
tion  predominates,  and  therefore  confers  upon  them  at  once 
the  security  and  commercial  accessibility  which  result  from 
contact  with  the  sea.  Other  countries,  like  Russia,  Germany 
and  Austro-Hungary,  chiefly  central  in  location,  have  the 
strategic  and  even  the  commercial  value  of  their  coasts  re- 
duced by  the  long,  tortuous  course  which  connects  them  with 
the  open  ocean.  Therefore,  we  find  Russia  planning  to  make 
a  great  port  at  Ekaterina  Harbor  on  the  northernmost  point 
of  her  Lapland  coast,  where  an  out-runner  from  the  Gulf 
Stream  ensures  an  ice-free  port  on  the  open  sea.  12  An  ad- 
mirable combination  of  central  and  peripheral  location  is 
seen  in  the  United  States.  Here  the  value  of  periphery  is 
greatly  enhanced  by  the  interoceanic  location  of  the  country ; 
and  the  danger  of  entanglements  arising  from  a  marked  cen- 
tral location  is  reduced  by  the  simplicity  of  the  political 
neighborhood.  But  our  country  has  paid  for  this  security 
by  an  historical  aloofness  and  poverty  of  influence.  Civilized 
countries  which  are  wholly  central  in  their  location  are  very 
few,  only  nine  in  all.  Six  of  these  are  mountain  or  plateau 
states,  like  Switzerland  and  Abyssinia,  which  have  used  the 
fortress  character  of  their  land  to  resist  conquest,  and  have 
preferred  independence  to  the  commercial  advantages  to  be 
gained  only  by  affiliation  with  their  peripheral  neighbors. 

Central  and  peripheral  location  presuppose  and  supple-  Inland  and 
ment  one  another.     One  people  inhabits  the  interior  of  an  c< 
island  or  continent  whose  rim  is  occupied  by  another.     The 
first  suffers  from  exclusion  from  the  sea  and  therefore  strives 


142  GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 

to  get  a  strip  of  coast.  The  coast  people  feel  the  drawback 
of  their  narrow  foothold  upon  the  land,  want  a  broader  base  in 
order  to  exploit  fully  the  advantages  of  their  maritime  loca- 
tion, fear  the  pressure  of  their  hinterland  when  the  great 
forces  there  imprisoned  shall  begin  to  move;  so  they  tend 
to  expand  inland  to  strengthen  themselves  and  weaken  the 
neighbor  in  their  rear.  The  English  colonies  of  America, 
prior  to  1763,  held  a  long  cordon  of  coast,  hemmed  in  between 
the  Appalachian  Mountains  and  the  sea.  Despite  threats 
of  French  encroachments  from  the  interior,  they  expanded 
from  this  narrow  peripheral  base  into  the  heart  of  the  con- 
tinent, and  after  the  Revolution  reached  the  Mississippi  River 
and  the  northern  boundary  of  the  Spanish  Floridas.  They 
now  held  a  central  location  in  relation  to  the  long  Spanish 
periphery  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  True  to  the  instincts  of 
that  location,  they  began  to  throw  the  weight  of  their  vast 
hinterland  against  the  weak  coastal  barrier.  This  gave  way, 
either  to  forcible  appropriation  of  territory  or  diplomacy  or 
war,  till  the  United  States  had  incorporated  in  her  own  ter- 
ritory the  peripheral  lands  of  the  Gulf  from  Florida  Strait 
to  the  Rio  Grande.  [See  map  page  156.] 

Russian  ^n  Asia  this  same  process  has  been  perennial  and  on  a  far 

expansion  greater  scale.  The  big  arid  core  of  that  continent,  contain- 
in  Asia.  mg  many  million  square  miles,  has  been  charged  with  an 
expansive  force.  From  the  appearance  of  the  Aryans  in  the 
Indus  Valley  and  the  Scythians  on  the  borders  of  Macedonia, 
it  has  sent  out  hordes  to  overwhelm  the  peripheral  lands  from 
the  Yellow  Sea  to  the  Black,  and  from  the  Indian  Ocean 
to  the  White  Sea. 1S  To-day  Russia  is  making  history  there 
on  the  pattern  set  by  geographic  conditions.  From  her 
most  southerly  province  in  Trans-Caspia,  conquered  a  short 
twenty-five  years  ago,  she  is  heading  towards  the  Indian 
Ocean.  The  Anglo-Russian  convention  of  August  31st,  1907, 
yielding  to  Russia  all  northern  Persia  as  her  sphere  of  in- 
fluence, enables  her  to  advance  half  way  to  the  Persian  Gulf, 
though  British  statesmen  regard  it  as  a  check  upon  her  am- 
bition, because  England  has  secured  right  to  the  littoral. 
But  Russia  by  this  great  stride  toward  her  goal  is  working 
with  causes,  satisfied  to  let  the  effects  follow  at  their  leisure. 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  143 

She  has  gained  the  best  portion  of  Persia,  comprising  the  six 
largest  cities  and  the  most  important  lines  of  communication 
radiating  from  the  capital.  l4  This  country  will  make  a  solid 
base  for  her  further  advance  to  the  Persian  Gulf;  and,  when 
developed  by  Russian  enterprise  in  railroad  building  and 
commerce,  it  will  make  a  heavy  weight  bearing  down  upon  the 
coast.  The  Muscovite  area  which  is  pressing  upon  Eng- 
land's Persian  littoral  reaches  from  Ispahan  and  Yezd  to  the 
far-away  shores  of  the  Arctic  Ocean. 

In  the  essentially  complementary  character  of  interior  and  Periphery 
periphery  are  rooted  all  these  coastward  and  landward  move-  as  goaf 
ments  of  expansion.  Where  an  equilibrium  seems  to  have 
been  reached,  the  peoples  who  have  accepted  either  the  one  or 
the  other  one-sided  location  have  generally  for  the  time  being 
ceased  to  grow.  Such  a  location  has  therefore  a  passive  char- 
acter. But  the  surprising  elasticity  of  many  nations  may 
start  up  an  unexpected  activity  which  will  upset  this  equili- 
brium. Where  the  central  location  is  that  of  small  mountain 
states,  which  are  handicapped  by  limited  resources  and  popu- 
lation, like  Nepal  and  Afghanistan,  or  overshadowed  by  far 
more  powerful  neighbors,  like  Switzerland,  the  passive  char- 
acter is  plain  enough.  In  the  case  of  larger  states,  like 
Servia,  Abyssinia,  and  Bolivia,  which  offer  the  material  and 
geographical  base  for  larger  populations  than  they  now  sup- 
port, it  is  often  difficult  to  say  whether  progression  or  re- 
trogression is  to  be  their  fate.  As  a  rule,  however,  the  expul- 
sion of  a  people  from  a  peripheral  point  of  advantage  and 
their  confinement  in  the  interior  gives  the  sign  of  national 
decay,  as  did  Poland's  loss  of  her  Baltic  seaboard.  Russia's 
loss  of  her  Manchurian  port  and  the  resignation  of  her  am- 
bition on  the  Chinese  coasts  is  at  least  a  serious  check.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  an  inland  country  enclosed  by  neighbors  suc- 
ceeds in  somewhere  getting  a  maritime  outlet,  the  sign  is 
hopeful.  The  century-old  political  slogan  of  Hungary,  "To 
the  sea,  Magyars !"  lias  borne  fruit  in  the  Adriatic  harbor  of 
Fiume,  which  is  to-day  the  pride  of  the  nation  and  in  no 
small  degree  a  basis  for  its  hope  of  autonomy.  The  history 
of  Montenegro  took  on  a  new  phase  when  from  its  mountain 
seclusion  it  recently  secured  the  short  strip  of  seaboard  which 


144 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 


Reaction 
between 
center  and 
periphery. 


it  had  won  and  lost  so  often.  Such  peripheral  holdings  are 
the  lungs  through  which  states  breathe. 

History  and  the  study  of  race  distribution  reveal  a  mass  of 
facts  which  represent  the  contrast  and  reaction  between  in- 
terior and  periphery.  The  marginal  lands  of  Asia,  from 
northern  Japan,  where  climatic  conditions  first  make  histori- 
cal development  possible,  around  the  whole  fringe  of  islands, 
peninsulas  and  border  lowlands  to  the  Aegean  coast  of  Asia 
Minor,  present  a  picture  of  culture  and  progress  as  com- 
pared with  the  high,  mountain-rimmed  core  of  the  continent, 
condemned  by  its  remoteness  and  inaccessibility  to  eternal 
retardation.  Europe  shows  the  same  contrast,  though  in 
less  pronounced  form.  Its  ragged  periphery,  all  the  way 
from  the  Balkan  Gibraltar  at  Constantinople  to  the  far 
northern  projections  of  Scandinavia  and  Finland,  shows  the 
value  of  a  seaward  outlook  both  in  culture  and  climate. 
Germany  beyond  the  Elbe  and  Austria  beyond  the  Danube 
begin  to  feel  the  shadow  of  the  continental  mass  behind  them ; 
and  from  their  eastern  borders  on  through  Russia  the  benumb- 
ing influence  of  a  central  location  grows,  till  beyond  the  Volga 
the  climatic,  economic,  social  and  political  conditions  of  Asia 
prevail.  Africa  is  all  core :  contour  and  relief  have  combined 
to  reduce  its  periphery  to  a  narrow  coastal  hem,  offering 
at  best  a  few  vantage  points  for  exploitation  to  the  great 
maritime  merchant  peoples  of  the  world.  Egypt,  embedded 
in  an  endless  stretch  of  desert  like  a  jewel  in  its  matrix,  was 
powerless  to  shake  off  the  influence  of  its  continental  environ- 
ment. Its  location  was  predominantly  central;  its  culture 
bore  the  stamp  of  isolation  and  finally  of  arrested  develop- 
ment. Australia,  the  classic  ground  of  retardation,  where 
only  shades  of  savagery  can  be  distinguished,  offered  the 
natives  of  its  northern  coast  some  faint  stimuli  in  the  visits 
of  Malay  seamen  from  the  nearby  Sunda  Islands;  but  its 
central  tribes,  shielded  by  geographic  segregation  from  ex- 
ternal influences,  have  retained  the  most  primitive  customs 
and  beliefs.15 

Expanding  Europe  has  long  been  wrestling  with  Africa,  but 
it  can  not  get  a  grip,  owing  to  the  form  of  its  antagonist;  it 
finds  no  limb  by  which  the  giant  can  be  tripped  and  thrown. 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  145 

Asia  presents  a  wide  border  of  marginal  lands,  some  of  them 
like  Arabia  and  India  being  almost  continental  in  their  pro- 
portions. Since  Europe  began  her  career  of  maritime  and 
colonial  expansion  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries, 
she  has  seized  upon  these  peripheral  projections  as  if  they 
were  the  handles  on  a  pilot  wheel,  and  by  them  she  has  steered 
the  course  of  Asia  ever  since.  These  semi-detached  outlyers  of 
the  continent  have  enabled  her  to  stretch  a  girdle  of  Eu- 
ropean influences  around  the  central  core.  Such  influences, 
through  the  avenues  of  commerce,  railway  concessions,  mis- 
sionary propaganda,  or  political  dominion,  have  permeated 
the  accessible  periphery  and  are  slowly  spreading  thence  into 
the  interior.  China  and  Persia  have  felt  these  influences  not 
less  than  India  and  Tongking ;  Japan,  which  has  most  effec- 
tually preserved  its  political  autonomy,  has  profited  by  them 
most. 

This  historical  contrast  between  center  and  periphery  of 
continents  reappears  in  smaller  land  masses,  such  as  penin- 
sulas and  islands.  The  principle  holds  good  regardless  of 
size.  The  whole  fringe  of  Arabia,  from  Antioch  to  Aden 
and  from  Mocha  to  Mascat,  has  been  the  scene  of  incoming 
and  outgoing  activities,  has  developed  live  bases  of  trade, 
maritime  growth,  and  culture,  while  the  inert,  somnolent  in- 
terior has  drowsed  away  its  long  eventless  existence.  The 
rugged,  inaccessible  heart  of  little  Sardinia  repeats  the  story 
of  central  Arabia  in  its  aloofness,  its  impregnability,  back- 
wardness, and  in  the  purity  of  its  race.  Its  accessible  coast, 
forming  a  convenient  way-station  on  the  maritime  crossroads 
of  the  western  Mediterranean,  has  received  a  succession  of 
conquerors  and  an  intermittent  influx  of  every  ethnic  strain 
known  in  the  great  basin. 

The  story  of  discovery  and  colonization,  from  the  days  of  Periphery  in 
ancient  Greek  enterprise  in  the  Mediterranean  to  the  recent  colonization. 
German  expansion  along  the  Gulf  of  Guinea,  shows  the  ap- 
propriation first  of  the  rims  of  islands  and  continents,  and 
later  that  of  the  interior.     A  difference  of  race  and  culture 
between  inland  and  peripheral  inhabitants  meets  us  almost 
everywhere    in    retarded    colonial    lands.       In    the    Philip- 
pines,  the   wild   people   of   Luzon,   Mindoro    and   the   Visa- 


146  GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 

yas  are  confined  almost  entirely  to  the  interior,  while  civil- 
ized or  Christianized  Malays  occupy  the  whole  seaboard, 
except  where  the  rugged  Sierra  Madre  Mountains,  fronting 
the  Pacific  in  Luzon,  harbor  a  sparse  population  of  primi- 
tive Negritos.  lfl  For  centuries  Arabs  held  the  coast  of  K.-i- ' 
Africa,  where  their  narrow  zone  of  settlement  bordered  on 
that  of  native  blacks,  with  whom  they  traded.  Even  ancient 
Greece  showed  a  wide  difference  in  type  of  character  and  cul- 
ture between  the  inland  and  maritime  states.  The  Greek 
landsman  was  courageous  and  steadfast,  but  crude,  illiterate, 
unenterprising,  showing  sterility  of  imagination  and  intellect; 
while  his  brother  of  the  seaboard  was  active,  daring,  mer- 
curial, imaginative,  open  to  all  the  influences  of  a  refining 
civilization.17  To-day  the  distribution  of  the  Greeks  along 
the  rim  of  the  Balkan  peninsula  and  Asia  Minor,  in  contrast 
to  the  Turks  and  Slavs  of  the  interior,  is  distinctly  a  per- 
ipheral phenomenon.18 

The  rapid  inland  advance  from  the  coast  of  oversea 
colonists  is  part  of  that  restless  activity  which  is  fostered  by 
contact  with  the  sea  and  supported  by  the  command  of 
abundant  resources  conferred  by  maritime  superiority.  The 
Anglo-Saxon  invasion  of  England,  as  later  the  English 
colonization  of  America,  seized  the  rim  of  the  land,  and 
promptly  pushed  up  the  rivers  in  sea-going  boats  far  into 
the  interior.  But  periphery  may  give  to  central  region  some- 
thing more  than  conquerors  and  colonists.  From  its  active 
markets  and  cosmopolitan  exchanges  there  steadily  filter 
into  the  interior  culture  and  commodities,  carried  by  peaceful 
merchant  and  missionary,  who,  however,  are  often  only  the 
harbingers  of  the  conqueror.  The  accessibility  of  the  per- 
iphery tends  to  raise  it  in  culture,  wealth,  density  of  popula- 
tion, and  often  in  political  importance,  far  in  advance  of 
the  center. 

Dominant  The  maritime  periphery  of  a  country  receives  a  variety  of 

historical  oversea  influences,  blends  and  assimilates  these  to  its  own 
culture,  Hellenizes,  Americanizes  or  Japanizes  them,  as  the 
case  may  be,  and  then  passes  them  on  into  the  interior.  Here 
no  one  foreign  influence  prevails.  On  the  land  boundaries 
the  case  is  different.  Each  inland  frontier  has  to  reckon  with 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 


147 


Civilized  Peoples {__ 

Wild  Peoples 
Negrito 


PHILIPPINE  ISLANDS. 
Distribution  of  Civilized  and  Wild  Peoples 


148 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 


The  Medi- 
terranean 
side  of 
Europe. 


a  different  neighbor  and  its  undiluted  influence.  A  pre- 
dominant central  location  means  a  succession  of  such  neigh- 
bors, on  all  sides  friction  which  may  polish  or  rub  sore.  The 
distinction  between  a  many-sided  and  a  one-sided  historical 
development  depends  upon  the  contact  of  a  people  with  its 
neighbors.  Consider  the  multiplicity  of  influences  which  have 
flowed  in  upon  Austria  from  all  sides.  But  not  all  such 
influences  are  similar  in  kind  or  in  degree.  The  most  power- 
ful neighbor  will  chiefly  determine  on  which  boundary  of  a 
country  its  dominant  historical  processes  are  to  work  them- 
selves out  in  a  given  epoch.  Therefore,  it  is  of  supreme  im- 
portance to  the  character  of  a  people's  history  on  which  side 
this  most  powerful  neighbor  is  located  Russia  had  for  several 
centuries  such  a  neighbor  in  the  Tartar  hordes  along  its 
southeastern  frontier,  and  therefore  its  history  received  an 
Asiatic  stamp ;  so,  too,  did  that  of  Austria  and  Hungary  in 
the  long  resistance  to  Turkish  invasion.  All  three  states 
suffered  in  consequence  a  retardation  of  development  on  their 
western  sides.  After  the  turmoil  on  the  Asiatic  frontier  had 
subsided,  the  great  centers  of  European  culture  and  com- 
merce in  Italy,  Germany  and  the  Baltic  lands  began  to  assert 
their  powers  of  attraction.  The  young  Roman  Republic  drew 
up  its  forces  to  face  the  threatening  power  of  Carthage  in  the 
south,  and  thereby  was  forced  into  rapid  maritime  develop- 
ment ;  the  Roman  Empire  faced  north  to  meet  the  inroads  of 
the  barbarians,  and  thereby  was  drawn  into  inland  expansion. 
All  these  instances  show  that  a  vital  historical  turning-point 
is  reached  in  the  development  of  every  country,  when  the  scene 
of  its  great  historical  happenings  shifts  from  one  side  to  an- 
other. 

In  addition  to  the  aggressive  neighbor,  there  is  often  a 
more  sustained  force  that  may  draw  the  activities  of  a  peo- 
ple toward  one  or  another  boundary  of  their  territory.  This 
may  be  the  abundance  of  land  and  unexploited  resources 
lying  on  a  colonial  frontier  and  attracting  the  unemployed 
energies  of  the  people,  such  as  existed  till  recently  in  the 
United  States, 19  and  such  as  is  now  transferring  the  most 
active  scenes  of  Russian  history  to  far-away  Siberia.  But  a 
stronger  attraction  is  that  of  a  higher  civilization  and  domin- 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  149 

ant  economic  interests.  So  long  as  the  known  world  was  con- 
fined to  the  temperate  regions  of  Europe,  Asia  and  Africa, 
together  with  the  tropical  districts  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  the 
necessities  of  trade  between  Orient  and  Occident  and  the 
historical  prestige  of  the  lands  bordering  on  the  Mediter- 
ranean placed  in  this  basin  the  center  of  gravity  of  the  cul- 
tural, commercial  and  political  life  of  Europe.  The  continent 
was  dominated  by  its  Asiatic  corner ;  its  every  country  took  on 
an  historical  significance  proportionate  to  its  proximity  and 
accessibility  to  this  center.  The  Papacy  was  a  Mediterranean 
power.  The  Crusades  were  Mediterranean  wars.  Athens, 
Rome,  Constantinople,  Venice,  and  Genoa  held  in  turn  the 
focal  positions  in  this  Asiatic-European  sea ;  they  were  on  the 
sunny  side  of  the  continent,  while  Portugal  and  England  lay 
in  shadow.  Only  that  portion  of  Britain  facing  France  felt 
the  cultural  influences  of  the  southern  lands.  The  estuaries 
of  the  Mersey  and  Clyde  were  marshy  solitudes,  echoing  to 
the  cry  of  the  bittern  and  the  ripple  of  Celtic  fishing-boat. 

After  the  year  1492  inaugurated  the  Atlantic  period  of  Change  of 
history,  the  western  front  of  Europe  superseded  the  Medi-  historical 
terranean  side  in  the  historical  leadership  of  the  continent.  "ont- 
The  Breton  coast  of  France  waked  up,  the  southern  seaboard 
dozed.  The  old  centers  in  the  Aegean  and  Adriatic  became 
drowsy  corners.  The  busy  traffic  of  the  Mediterranean  was 
transferred  to  the  open  ocean,  where,  from  Trafalger  to  Nor- 
way, the  western  states  of  Europe  held  the  choice  location  on 
the  world's  new  highway.  Liverpool,  Plymouth,  Glasgow, 
Hamburg,  Rotterdam,  Antwerp,  Cherbourg,  Lisbon  and 
Cadiz  were  shifted  from  shadowy  margin  to  illuminated  cen- 
ter, and  became  the  foci  of  the  new  activity.  Theirs  was  a 
new  continental  location,  maintaining  relations  of  trade  and 
colonization  with  two  hemispheres.  Their  neighbors  were 
now  found  on  the  Atlantic  shores  of  the  Americas  and  the 
peripheral  lands  of  Asia.  These  cities  became  the  exponents 
of  the  intensity  with  which  their  respective  states  exploited 
the  natural  advantages  of  this  location. 

The  experience  of  Germany  was  typical  of  the  change  of 
front.  From  the  tenth  to  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, this  heir  of  the  old  Roman  Empire  was  drawn  toward 


150  GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 

Italy  by  every  tie  of  culture,  commerce,  and  political  ideal. 
This  concentration  of  interest  in  its  southern  neighbor  made 
it  ignore  a  fact  so  important  as  the  maritime  development 
of  the  Hanse  Towns,  wherein  lay  the  real  promise  of  its 
future,  the  hope  of  its  commercial  and  colonial  expansion. 
The  shifting  of  its  historical  center  of  gravity  to  the  At- 
lantic seaboard  therefore  came  late,  further  retarded  by  lack 
of  national  unity  and  national  purposes.  But  the  present 
wide  circle  of  Germany's  transoceanic  commerce  incident  upon 
its  recent  industrial  development,  the  phenomenal  increase  of 
its  merchant  marine,  the  growth  of  Hamburg  and  Bremen, 
the  construction  of  ship  canals  to  that  short  North  Sea  coast, 
and  the  enormous  utilization  of  Dutch  ports  for  German 
commerce,  all  point  to  the  attraction  of  distant  economic 
interests,  even  when  meagerly  supported  by  colonial  posses- 
sions. 

Location,  therefore,  while  it  is  the  most  important  sin- 
gle geographic  factor,  is  at  the  same  time  the  one  most 
subject  to  the  vicissitudes  attending  the  anthropo-geograph- 
ical  evolution  of  the  earth.  Its  value  changes  with  the  trans- 
fer of  the  seats  of  the  higher  civilizations  from  sub-tropical 
to  temperate  lands ;  from  the  margin  of  enclosed  sea  to  the 
hem  of  the  open  ocean;  from  small,  naturally  defined  terri- 
tories to  large,  elastic  areas;  from  mere  periphery  to  a  com- 
bination of  periphery  and  interior,  commanding  at  once  the 
freedom  of  the  sea  and  the  resources  of  a  wide  hinterland. 
Contrasted  Even  in  Europe,  however,  where  the  Atlantic  leaning  of  all 

historical  the  states  is  so  marked  as  to  suggest  a  certain  dependence, 
the  strength  of  this  one-sided  attraction  is  weakened  by  the 
complexity  and  closeness  of  the  vicinal  grouping  of  the 
several  nations.  Germany's  reliance  upon  the  neighboring 
grain  fields  of  Russia  and  Hungary  and  the  leather  of  the, 
southern  steppes  counteracts  somewhat  the  far-off  magnet  of 
America's  wheat  and  cattle.  England  experienced  a  radical 
change  of  geographic  front  with  the  sailing  of  the  Cabots; 
but  the  enormous  tonnage  entering  and  passing  from  the 
North  Sea  and  Channel  ports  for  her  European  trade 20 
show  the  attraction  of  the  nearby  Continent.  Oftentimes 
we  find  two  sides  of  a  country  each  playing  simultaneously 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  151 

a  different,  yet  an  equally  important  historical  part,  and  thus 
distributing  the  historical  activities,  while  diversifying  the 
historical  development  of  the  people.  The  young  United 
States  were  profoundly  influenced  as  to  national  ideals  and 
their  eventual  territorial  career  by  the  free,  eager  life  and  the 
untrammeled  enterprise  of  its  wilderness  frontier  beyond  the 
Alleghenies,  while  through  the  Atlantic  seaboard  it  was  kept 
in  steadying  contact  with  England  and  the  inherited  ideals  of 
the  race.  Russia  is  subjected  to  different  influences  on  its 
various  fronts ;  it  is  progressive,  industrial,  socialistic  on  its 
European  side  in  Poland ;  expansive  and  radical  in  a  different 
way  in  colonial  Siberia ;  aggressive  in  the  south,  bending  its 
energies  toward  political  expansion  along  the  Mediterranean 
and  Persian  Gulf  seaboards.  In  all  such  countries  there  is  a 
constant  shifting  and  readjustment  of  extra-territorial  in- 
fluences. 

It  is  otherwise  in  states  of  very  simple  vicinal  grouping,  One-sided 
coupled  with  only  a  single  country  or  at  best  two.  Spain,  historical 
from  the  time  Hamilcar  Barca  made  it  a  colony  of  ancient  relatlons- 
Carthage,  down  to  the  decline  of  its  Saracen  conquerors, 
was  historically  linked  with  Africa.  Freeman  calls  at- 
tention to  "the  general  law  by  which,  in  almost  all  periods 
of  history,  either  the  masters  of  Spain  have  borne  rule 
in  Africa  or  the  masters  of  Africa  have  borne  rule  in 
Spain."  The  history  of  such  simply  located  countries 
tends  to  have  a  correspondingly  one-sided  character.  Portu- 
gal's development  has  been  under  the  exclusive  influence  of 
Spain,  except  for  the  oversea  stimuli  brought  to  it  by  the 
Atlantic.  England's  long  southern  face  close  to  the  French 
coast  had  for  centuries  the  effect  of  interweaving  its  history 
with  that  of  its  southern  neighbor.  The  conspicuous  fact  in 
the  foreign  history  of  Japan  has  been  its  intimate  connec- 
tion with  Korea  above  all  the  other  states.21  Egypt,  which 
projects  as  an  alluvial  peninsula  into  an  ocean  of  desert  from 
southwestern  Asia,  has  seen  its  history,  from  the  time 
of  the  Shepherd  Kings  to  that  of  Napoleon,  repeatedly  linked 
with  Palestine  and  Syria.  Every  Asiatic  or  European  con- 
quest of  these  two  countries  has  eventually  been  extended  to 
the  valley  of  the  Nile ;  and  Egypt's  one  great  period  of  ex- 


152 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 


Scattered 
location 
due  to 
geographic 
conditions. 


pansion  saw  this  eastern  coast  of  the  Mediterranean  as  far  as 
the  Euphrates  united  to  the  dominion  of  the  Pharaohs.  Here 
is  a  one-sided  geographical  location  in  an  exaggerated  form, 
emphasized  by  the  physical  and  political  barrenness  of  the 
adjacent  regions  of  Africa  and  the  strategic  importance  of 
the  isthmian  district  between  the  Mediterranean  and  Indian 
Ocean. 

The  forms  of  vicinal  location  thus  far  considered  pre- 
suppose a  compact  or  continuous  distribution,  such  as  char- 
acterizes the  more  fertile  and  populous  areas  of  the  earth. 
Desert  regions,  whether  due  to  Arctic  cold  or  extreme  aridity, 
distribute  their  sparse  population  in  small  groups  at  a  few 
favored  points,  and  thus  from  physical  causes  give  rise  to 
the  anthropo-geographical  phenomenon  of  scattered  location. 
Districts  of  intense  cold,  which  sustain  life  only  in  contact 
with  marine  supplies  of  food,  necessitate  an  intermittent  dis- 
tribution along  the  seaboard,  with  long,  unoccupied  stretches 
between.  This  is  the  location  we  are  familiar  with  among  the 
Eskimo  of  Greenland  and  Alaska,  among  the  Norse  and  Lapps 
in  the  rugged  Norwegian  province  of  Finmarken,  where  over 
two-thirds  of  the  population  live  by  fishing.  In  the  interior 
districts  of  this  province  about  Karasjok  and  Kantokeino,  the 
reindeer  Lapps  show  a  corresponding  scattered  grouping 
here  and  there  on  the  inhospitable  slopes  of  the  mountains.22 
In  that  one-half  of  Switzerland  lying  above  the  altitude 
where  agriculture  is  possible,  population  is  sprinkled  at  wide 
intervals  over  the  sterile  surface  of  the  highlands. 

A  somewhat  similar  scattered  location  is  found  in  arid 
deserts,  where  population  is  restricted  to  the  oases  dropped 
here  and  there  at  wide  intervals  amid  the  waste  of  sand.  But 
unlike  those  fragments  of  human  life  on  the  frozen  outskirts 
of  the  habitable  world,  the  oasis  states  usually  constitute 
links  in  a  chain  of  connection  across  the  desert  between  the 
fertile  lands  on  either  side,  and  therefore  form  part  of  a 
series,  in  which  the  members  maintain  firm  and  necessary 
economic  relations.  Every  caravan  route  across  the  Sahara 
is  dotted  by  a  series  of  larger  or  smaller  tribal  settlements. 
Tripoli,  Sokna,  Murzuk,  Bilma  and  Bornu  form  one  such 
chain ;  Algiers,  El  Golea,  Twat,  the  salt  mines  of  Taudeni, 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 


153 


Norwegian-Russian  boundary  ^. 
Settlements 


DISTRIBUTION  OF  SETTLEMENT  IN  THE  NORWEGIAN 
PROVINCE  OF  FINMABKEN. 

Arawan  and  Timbuctoo,  another.  Bagdad,  Hayil,  Boreyda 
and  Mecca  trace  the  road  of  pilgrim  and  merchant  starting 
from  the  Moslem  land  of  the  Euphrates  to  the  shrine  of  Mo- 
hammed.23 

Not  unlike  this  serial  grouping  of  oasis  states  along  cara-  Island  way 
van  routes  through  the  desert   are  the  island  way  stations 

maritime 

that  rise  out  of  the  waste  of  the  sea  and  are  connected  by  the  routes< 
great  maritime  routes  of  trade.  Such  are  the  Portuguese 
Madeiras,  Bissagos,  and  San  Thome  on  the  line  between  Lis- 
bon and  Portuguese  Loanda  in  West  Africa ;  and  their  other 
series  of  the  Madeiras,  Cape  Verde,  and  Fernando,  which 
facilitated  communication  with  Pernambuco  when  Brazil  was 


154 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 


Scattered 
location 
of  primi- 
tive tribes. 


a  Portuguese  colony.  The  classic  example  of  this  serial 
grouping  is  found  in  the  line  of  islands,  physical  or  political, 
which  trace  England's  artery  of  communication  with  India — 
Gibraltar,  Malta,  Cyprus,  Perim,  Aden,  Sokotra,  and  Ceylon, 
besides  her  dominant  position  at  Suez. 

Quite  different  from  this  scattered  distribution,  due  to 
physical  conditions,  in  an  otherwise  uninhabited  waste  is 
that  wide  dispersal  of  a  people  in  small  detached  groups  which 
is  the  rule  in  lower  stages  of  culture,  and  which  bespeaks 
necessity  of  relatively  large  territorial  reserves  for  the 
uneconomic  method  of  land  utilization  characteristic  of  hunt- 
ing, fishing,  pastoral  nomadism,  and  primitive  agriculture. 
A  distribution  which  claims  large  areas,  without,  however, 
maintaining  exclusive  possession  or  complete  occupation,  in- 
dicates among  advanced  peoples  an  unfinished  process, 24  es- 
pecially unfinished  expansion,  such  as  marked  the  early 
French  and  English  colonies  in  America  and  the  recent  Rus- 
sian occupation  of  Siberia.  Among  primitive  peoples  it  is 
the  normal  condition,  belongs  to  the  stage  of  civilization,  not 
to  any  one  land  or  any  one  race,  though  it  has  been  called 
the  American  form  of  distribution. 

Not  only  are  villages  and  encampments  widely  dispersed, 
but  also  the  tribal  territories.  The  Tupis  were  found 
by  the  Portuguese  explorers  along  the  coast  of  eastern  Brazil 
and  in  the  interior  from  the  mouth  of  the  La  Plata  to  the  lower 
Amazon,  while  two  distant  tribes  of  the  Tupis  were  dropped 
down  amid  a  prevailing  Arawak  population  far  away  among 
the  foothills  of  the  Andes  in  two  separate  localities  on  the 
western  Amazon.25  [See  map  page  101.]  The  Athapascans, 
from  their  great  compact  northern  area  between  Hudson 
Bay,  the  Saskatchewan  River,  and  the  Eskimo  shores  of  the 
Arctic  Ocean  sent  southward  a  detached  offshoot  comprising 
the  Navajos,  Apaches  and  Lipans,  who  were  found  along  the 
Rio  Grande  from  its  source  almost  to  its  mouth ;  and  several 
smaller  fragments  westward  who  were  scattered  along  the 
Pacific  seaboard  from  Puget  Sound  to  northern  California.20 
The  Cherokees  of  the  southern  Appalachians  and  the  Tu> 
caroras  of  eastern  North  Carolina  were  detached  groups  of 
the  Iroquois,  who  had  their  chief  seat  about  the  lower  Great 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  155 

Lakes  and  the  St.  Lawrence.  Virginia  and  North  Carolina 
harbored  also  several  tribes  of  Sioux,27  who  were  also  repre- 
sented in  southern  Mississippi  by  the  small  Biloxi  nation, 
though  the  chief  Sioux  area  lay  between  the  Arkansas  and 
Saskatchewan  rivers.  Similarly  the  Caddoes  of  Louisiana 
and  eastern  Texas  had  one  remote  offshoot  on  the  Platte 
River  and  another,  the  Arikaras,  on  the  upper  Missouri 
near  its  great  bend.  [See  map  page  54.]  But  the  territory 
of  the  Caddoes,  in  turn,  was  sprinkled  with  Choctaws,  who 
belonged  properly  east  of  the  Mississippi,  but  who  in  1803 
were  found  scattered  in  fixed  villages  or  wandering  groups 
near  the  Bayou  Teche,  on  the  Red  River,  the  Washita,  and 
the  Arkansas.28  Their  villages  were  frequently  interspersed 
with  others  of  the  Biloxi  Sioux. 

This  fragmentary  distribution  appears  in  Africa  among 
people  in  parallel  stages  of  civilization.  Dr.  Junker  found 
it  as  a  universal  phenomenon  in  Central  Africa  along  the 
watershed  between  the  White  Nile  and  the  Welle-Congo. 
Here  the  territory  of  the  dominant  Zandeh  harbored  a  motley 
collection  of  shattered  tribes,  remnants  of  peoples,  and  in- 
truding or  refugee  colonies  from  neighboring  districts.  29 
The  few  weak  bonds  between  people  and  soil  characterizing 
retarded  races  are  insufficient  to  secure  permanent  residence 
in  the  face  of  a  diminished  game  supply,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Choctaws  above  cited,  or  of  political  disturbance  or  op- 
pression, or  merely  the  desire  for  greater  independence,  as 
in  that  of  so  many  African  tribes. 

A  scattered  location  results  in   all  stages   of  civilization  Ethnic 
when  an  expanding  or  intruding  people  begins  to  appropri-  islands  of 
ate  the  territory  of  a  different  race.     Any  long  continued  in-  exPansion- 
filtration,   whether  peaceful   or   aggressive,   results   in   race 
islands  or  archipelagoes  distributed  through  a  sea  of  abori- 
gines.     Semitic  immigration   from   southern   Arabia  has  in    n  '- 
this  way  striped  and  polka-dotted  the  surface  of  Hamitic 
Abyssinia.  30     Groups  of  pure  German  stock  are  to-day  scat- 
tered through  the  Baltic  and  Polish  provinces  of  Russia.31 
[See  map  page  223.]      In  ancient  times  the  advance  guard 
of  Teutonic  migration  crossed  the  Rhenish  border  of  Gaul, 
selected    choice   sites   here   and   there,   after   the   manner   of 


156 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 


87 


83 


75 


67 


DISTRIBUTION  OF  POPULATION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  IN   1800. 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  157 

Ariovistus,  and  appeared  as  enclaves  in  the  encompassing 
Gallic  population.  While  the  Anahuac  plateau  of  Mexico 
formed  the  center  of  the  Aztec  or  Nahuatl  group  of  Indians, 
outlying  colonies  of  this  stock  occurred  among  the  Maya 
people  of  the  Tehuantepec  region,  and  in  Guatemala  and 
Nicaragua.32 

Such  detached  fragments  or  rather  spores  of  settle- 
ment characterize  all  young  geographical  boundaries,  where 
ethnic  and  political  frontiers  are  still  in  the  making.  The 
early  French,  English,  Dutch,  and  Swedish  settlements  in 
America  took  the  form  of  archipelagoes  in  a  surrounding 
sea  of  Indian-owned  forest  land;  and  in  1800,  beyond  the 
frontier  of  continuous  settlement  in  the  United  States  long 
slender  peninsulas  and  remote  outlying  islands  of  white  oc- 
cupation indicated  American  advance  at  the  cost  of  the  native. 
Similarly  the  Portuguese,  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, seized  and  fortified  detached  points  along  the  coast 
of  East  Africa  at  Sofala,  Malindi,  Mombassa,  Kilwa,  Lamu, 
Zanzibar  and  Barava,  which  served  as  way  stations  for 
Portuguese  ships  bound  for  India,  and  were  outposts  of  ex- 
pansion from  their  Mozambique  territory.33  The  snow- 
muffled  forests  of  northern  Siberia  have  their  solitudes  broken 
at  wide  intervals  by  Russian  villages,  located  only  along  the 
streams  for  fishing,  gold-washing  and  trading  with  the  native. 
These  lonely  clearings  are  outposts  of  the  broad  band  of 
Muscovite  settlement  which  stretches  across  southern  Siberia 
from  the  Ural  Mountains  to  the  Angara  River.34  [See  map 
page  103.] 

The  most  exaggerated  example  of  scattered  political  loca-  Political 
tion  existing  to-day  is  found  in  the  bizarre  arrangement  of  islands  of 
European  holdings  on  the  west  coast  of  Africa  between  the    ™ 
Senegal  and  Congo  rivers.     Here  in  each  case  a  handful  of 
governing  whites  is  dropped  down  in  the  midst  of  a  dark- 
skinned  population  in  several  districts  along  the  coast.     The 
six  detached   seaboard  colonies   of  the  French  run  back   in 
the  interior  into  a  common  French-owned  hinterland  formed 
by  the  Sahara  and  western  Sudan,  which  since  1894  link  the 
Guinea  Coast  colonies  with  French  Algeria  and  Tunis ;  but 
the  various  British  holdings  have  no  territorial  cohesion  at 


158 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 


Ethnic 
islands  of 
survival. 


any  point,  nor  have  the  Spanish  or  Portuguese  or  German. 
The  scattered  location  of  these  different  European  posses- 
sions is  for  the  most  part  the  expression  of  a  young  coloniz- 
ing activity,  developed  in  the  past  fifty  years,  and  signal- 
ized by  the  vigorous  intrusion  of  the  French  and  Germans 
into  the  field.  To  the  anthropo-geographer  the  map  of  west- 
ern Africa  presents  the  picture  of  a  political  situation  wholly 
immature,  even  embryonic.  The  history  of  similar  scattered 
outposts  of  political  expansion  in  America,  India  and  South 
Africa  teaches  us  to  look  for  extensive  consolidation. 

Race  islands  occur  also  when  a  land  is  so  inundated  by 
a  tide  of  invasion  or  continuous  colonization  that  the  original 
inhabitants  survive  only  as  detached  remnants,  where  pro- 
tecting natural  conditions,  such  as  forests,  jungles,  moun- 
tains or  swamps,  provide  an  asylum,  or  where  a  sterile  soil 
or  rugged  plateau  has  failed  to  attract  the  cupidity  of 
the  conqueror.  The  dismembered  race,  especially  one  in  a 
lower  status  of  civilization,  can  be  recognized  as  such  islands 
of  survival  by  their  divided  distribution  in  less  favored 
localities,  into  which  they  have  fled,  and  in  which  seldom  can 
they  increase  and  recombine  to  recover  their  lost  heritage. 
In  Central  Africa,  between  the  watersheds  of  the  Nile,  Congo 
and  Zambesi,  there  is  scarcely  a  large  native  state  that  does 
not  shelter  in  its  forests  scattered  groups  of  dwarf  hunter 
folk  variously  known  as  Watwa,  Batwa,  and  Akka.35  They 
serve  the  agricultural  tribes  as  auxiliaries  in  war,  and  trade 
with  them  in  meat  and  ivory,  but  also  rob  their  banana  groves 
and  manioc  patches.  The  local  dispersion  of  these  pygmies 
in  small  isolated  groups  among  stronger  peoples  points  to 
them  as  survivals  of  a  once  wide-spread  aboriginal  race, 
another  branch  of  which,  as  Schweinfurth  suggested,  is 
probably  found  in  the  dwarfed  Bushmen  and  Hottentots  of 
South  Africa.30  [See  map  page  105.] 

Similar  in  distribution  and  in  mode  of  life  are  the  abori- 
gines of  the  Philippines,  the  dwarf  Negritos,  who  are  still 
found  inhabiting  the  forests  in  various  localities.  They  are 
dispersed  through  eight  provinces  of  Luzon  and  in  several 
other  islands,  generally  in  the  interior,  whither  they  have  been 
driven  by  the  invading  Malays.37  [See  map  page  147.]  But 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  159 

the  Negritos  crop  out  again  in  the  mountain  interior  of  For- 
mosa and  Borneo,  in  the  eastern  peninsula  of  Celebes,  and  in 
various  islands  of  the  Malay  Archipelago  as  far  east  as  Ceram 
and  Flores,  amid  a  prevailing  Malay  stock.  Toward  the  west 
they  come  to  the  surface  in  the  central  highland  of  Malacca, 
in  the  Nicobar  and  Andaman  Islands,  and  in  several  moun- 
tain and  jungle  districts  of  India.  Here  again  is  the  typical 
geographic  distribution  of  a  moribund  aboriginal  race,  whose 
shrivelled  patches  merely  dot  the  surface  of  their  once  wide 
territory.38  The  aboriginal  Kolarian  tribes  of  India  are 
found  under  the  names  of  Bhils,  Kols  and  Santals  scattered 
about  in  the  fastnesses  of  the  Central  Indian  jungles,  the  Vind- 
hyan  Range,  and  in  the  Rajputana  Desert,  within  the  area 
covered  by  Indo- Aryan  occupation.39  [See  map  page  103.] 

Such  broad,  intermittent  dispersal  is  the  anthropological  Discontinu- 
prototype  of  the  "discontinuous  distribution"  of  biol-  ous  dis- 
ogists.  By  this  they  mean  that  certain  types  of  plants  and 
animals  occur  in  widely  separated  regions,  without  the  pres- 
ence of  any  living  representatives  in  the  intermediate  area. 
But  they  point  to  the  rock  records  to  show  that  the  type  once 
occupied  the  whole  territory,  till  extensive  elimination  oc- 
curred, owing  to  changes  in  climatic  or  geologic  conditions  or 
to  sharpened  competition  in  the  struggle  for  existence, 
with  the  result  that  the  type  survived  only  in  detached  lo- 
calities offering  a  favorable  environment.40  In  animal  and 
plant  life,  the  ice  invasion  of  the  Glacial  Age  explains  most  of 
these  islands  of  survival;  in  human  life,  the  invasion  of 
stronger  peoples.  The  Finnish  race,  which  in  the  ninth  cen- 
tury covered  nearly  a  third  of  European  Russia,  has  been 
shattered  by  the  blows  of  Slav  expansion  into  numerous  frag- 
ments which  lie  scattered  about  within  the  old  ethnic  bound- 
ary from  the  Arctic  Ocean  to  the  Don-Volga  watershed.41 
The  encroachments  of  the  whites  upon  the  red  men  of 
America  early  resulted  in  their  geographical  dispersion. 
The  map  showing  the  distribution  of  population  in  1830 
reveals  large  detached  areas  of  Indian  occupancy  embedded 
in  the  prevailing  white  territory.42  The  rapid  compression  of 
the  tribal  lands  and  the  introduction  of  the  reservation  sys- 
tem resulted  in  the  present  arrangement  of  yet  smaller  and 


160 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 


Contrasted 
location. 


Geograph- 
ical 
polarity. 


more  widely  scattered  groups.  Such  islands  of  survival  tend 
constantly  to  contract  and  diminish  in  number  with  the 
growing  progress,  density,  and  land  hunger  of  the  surround- 
ing race.  The  Kaffir  islands  and  the  Hottentot  "locations" 
in  South  Africa,  large  as  they  now  are,  will  repeat  the  his- 
tory of  the  American  Indian  lands,  a  history  of  gradual 
shrinkage  and  disappearance  as  territorial  entities. 

Every  land  contains  in  close  juxtaposition  areas  of 
sharply  contrasted  cultural,  economic  and  political  devel- 
opment, due  to  the  influence  of  diverse  natural  locations 
emphasizing  lines  of  ethnic  cleavage  made  perhaps  by  some 
great  historical  struggle.  In  mountainous  countries  the  con- 
quered people  withdraw  to  the  less  accessible  heights  and  leave 
the  fertile  valleys  to  the  victorious  intruders.  The  two  races 
are  thus  held  apart,  and  the  difference  in  their  respective 
modes  of  life  forced  upon  them  by  contrasted  geographic  con- 
ditions tends  still  farther  for  a  time  to  accentuate  their  di- 
versity. The  contrasted  location  of  the  dislodged  Alpine  race, 
surviving  in  all  the  mountains  and  highlands  of  western  Eur- 
ope over  against  the  Teutonic  victors  settled  in  the  plains,43 
has  its  parallel  in  many  parts  of  Asia  and  Africa ;  it  is  almost 
always  coupled  with  a  corresponding  contrast  in  mode  of  life, 
which  is  at  least  in  part  geographically  determined.  In  Al- 
geria, the  Arab  conquerors,  who  form  the  larger  part  of  the 
population,  are  found  in  the  plains  where  they  live  the  life  of 
nomads  in  their  tents;  the  Berbers,  who  were  the  original 
inhabitants,  driven  back  into  the  fastnesses  of  the  Atlas 
ranges,  form  now  an  industrious,  sedentary  farmer  class,  living 
in  stone  houses,  raising  stock,  and  tilling  their  fields  as  if  they 
were  market  gardeners.44  In  the  Andean  states  of  South 
America,  the  eastern  slopes  of  the  Cordilleras,  which  are 
densely  forested  owing  to  their  position  in  the  course  of  the 
trade-winds,  harbor  wild,  nomadic  tribes  of  hunting  and  fish- 
ing Indians  who  differ  in  stock  and  culture  from  the  Inca  In- 
dians settled  in  the  drier  Andean  basins. 4j  [See  map 
page  101.] 

Every  geographical  region  of  strongly  marked  character 
possesses  a  certain  polarity,  by  reason  of  which  it  attracts 
certain  racial  or  economic  elements  of  population,  and 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  161 

repels  others.  The  predatory  tribes  of  the  desert  are  con- 
stantly reinforced  by  refugee  outlaws  from  the  settled  agricul- 
tural communities  along  its  borders.46  The  mountains  which 
offer  a  welcome  asylum  for  the  persecuted  Waldenses  have 
no  lure  for  the  money-making  Jew,  who  is  therefore  rarely 
found  there.  The  negroes  of  the  United  States  are  more  and 
more  congregating  in  the  Gulf  States,  making  the  "Black 
Belt"  blacker.  The  fertile  tidewater  plains  of  ante-bellum  Vir- 
ginia and  Maryland  had  a  rich,  aristocratic  white  population 
of  slave-holding  planters ;  the  mountain  backwoods  of  the  Ap- 
palachian ranges,  whose  conditions  of  soil  and  relief  were  ill 
adapted  for  slave  cultivation,  had  attracted  a  poorer  demo- 
cratic farmer  class,  who  tilled  their  small  holdings  by  their 
own  labor  and  consequently  entertained  little  sympathy  for 
the  social  and  economic  system  of  the  tidewater  country.  This 
is  the  contrast  between  mountain  and  plain  which  is  as  old 
as  humanity.  It  presented  problems  to  the  legislation  of 
Solon,  and  caused  West  Virginia  to  split  off  from  the  mother 
State  during  the  Civil  War.47 

Each  contrasted  district  has  its  own  polarity ;  but  with 
this  it  attracts  not  one  but  many  of  the  disruptive  forces 
which  are  pent  up  in  every  people  or  state.  Certain  condi- 
tions of  climate,  soil,  and  tillable  area  in  the  Southern  States 
of  the  Union  made  slave  labor  remunerative,  while  opposite 
conditions  in  the  North  combined  eventually  to  exclude  it 
thence.  Slave  labor  in  the  South  brought  with  it  in  turn  a 
whole  train  of  social  and  economic  consequences,  notably  the 
repulsion  of  foreign  white  immigration  and  the  development 
of  shiftless  or  wasteful  industrial  methods,  which  further 
sharpened  the  contrast  between  the  two  sections.  The  same 
contrast  occurs  in  Italian  territory  between  Sicily  and  Lom- 
bardy.  Here  location  at  the  two  extremities  of  the  peninsula 
has  involved  a  striking  difference  in  ethnic  infusions  in  the  two 
districts,  different  historical  careers  owing  to  different  vicinal 
grouping,  and  dissimilar  geographic  conditions.  These  effects 
operating  together  and  attracting  other  minor  elements  of 
divergence,  have  conspired  to  emphasize  the  already  strong  . 
contrast  between  northern  and  southern  Italy.  marks  of 

In  geographical  location  can  be  read  the  signs  of  growth  growth. 


162 


Marks  of 

inland 

expansion. 


or  decay.  There  are  racial  and  national  areas  whose  form  is 
indicative  of  development,  expansion,  while  others  show  the 
symptoms  of  decline.  The  growing  people  seize  all  the  geo- 
graphic advantages  within  their  reach,  whether  lying  inside 
their  boundaries  or  beyond.  In  the  latter  case,  they  prompt- 
ly extend  their  frontiers  to  include  the  object  of  their  desire, 
as  the  young  United  States  did  in  the  case  of  the  Mississippi 
River  and  the  Gulf  coast.  European  peoples,  like  the 
Russians  in  Asia,  all  strive  to  reach  the  sea ;  and  when  they 
have  got  there,  they  proceed  to  embrace  as  big  a  strip  of  coast 
as  possible.  Therefore  the  whole  colonization  movement  of 
western  and  central  Europe  was  in  the  earlier  periods  re- 
stricted to  coasts,  although  not  to  such  an  excessive  degree  as 
that  of  the  Phoenicians  and  Greeks.  Their  own  maritime 
location  had  instructed  them  as  to  the  value  of  seaboards, 
and  at  the  same  time  made  this  form  of  expansion  the  simplest 
and  easiest. 

On  the  other  hand,  that  growing  people  which  finds  its 
coastward  advance  blocked,  and  is  therefore  restricted  to 
landward  expansion,  seizes  upon  every  natural  feature  that 
will  aid  its  purpose.  It  utilizes  every  valley  highway  and 
navigable  river,  as  the  Russians  did  in  the  case  of  the  Dnieper, 
Don,  Volga,  Kama  and  Northern  Dwina  in  their  radial  ex- 
pansion from  the  Muscovite  center  at  Moscow,  and  as  later 
they  used  the  icy  streams  of  Siberia  in  their  progress  toward 
the  Pacific ;  or  as  the  Americans  in  their  trans-continental  ad- 
vance used  the  Ohio,  Tennessee,  the  Great  Lakes,  and  the 
Missouri.  They  reach  out  toward  every  mountain  pass 
leading  to  some  choice  ultramontane  highway^  Bulges  or 
projecting  angles  of  their  frontier  indicate  the  path  they 
plan  to  follow,  and  always  include  or  aim  at  some  natural 
feature  which  will  facilitate  their  territorial  growth.  The 
acquisition  of  the  province  of  Ticino  in  1512  gave  the  Swiss 
Confederation  a  foothold  upon  Lake  Maggiore,  perhaps  the 
most  important  waterway  of  northern  Italy,  and  the  possession 
of  the  Val  Leventina,  which  now  carries  the  St.  Got t hard  Rail- 
road down  to  the  plains  of  the  Po.  Every  bulge  of  Russia's 
Asiatic  frontier,  whether  in  the  Trans-Caucasus  toward  the 
Mesopotamian  basin  and  the  Persian  Gulf,  or  up  the  Murghab 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  163 

and  Tedjend  rivers  toward  the  gates  of  Herat,  is  directed 
at  some  mountain  pass  and  an  outlet  seaward  beyond. 

If  this  process  of  growth  bring  a  people  to  the  borders 
of  a  desert,  there  they  halt  perhaps  for  a  time,  but  only,  as 
it  were,  to  take  breath  for  a  stride  across  the  sand  to  the  near- 
est oasis.  The  ancient  Egyptians  advanced  by  a  chain  of  oases 
— Siwa,  Angila,  Sella  and  Sokna,  across  the  Libyan  Desert  to 
the  Syrtis  Minor.  The  Russians  in  the  last  twenty-five  years 
have  spread  across  the  arid  wastes  of  Turkestan  by  way  of 
the  fertile  spots  of  Khiva,  Bukhara  and  Merv  to  the  irrigated 
slopes  of  the  Hindu  Kush  and  Tian  Shan  Mountains.  The 
French  extended  the  boundaries  of  Algiers  southward  into 
the  desert  to  include  the  caravan  routes  focusing  at  the  great 
oases  of  Twat  and  Tidekelt,  years  before  their  recent  appro- 
priation of  the  western  Sahara. 

As  territorial  expansion  is  the  mark  of  growth,  so  the  sign  Marks  of 
of  decline  is  the  relinquishment  of  land  that  is  valuable  or  decline, 
necessary  to  a  people's  well-being.  The  gradual  retreat  of 
the  Tartars  and  in  part  also  of  the  Kirghis  tribes  from  their 
best  pasture  lands  along  the  Volga  into  the  desert  or  steppes 
indicates  their  decrease  of  power,  just  as  the  withdrawal  of 
the  Indians  from  their  hunting  grounds  in  forest  and  prairie 
was  the  beginning  of  their  decay.  Bolivia  maimed  herself 
for  all  time  when  in  1884  she  relinquished  to  Chile  her  one 
hundred  and  eighty  miles  of  coast  between  the  Rio  Lao  and 
the  twenty-fourth  parallel.  Her  repeated  efforts  later 
to  recover  at  least  one  seaport  on  the  Pacific  indicate  her 
own  estimate  of  the  loss  by  which  she  was  limited  to  an  inland  • 

location,  and  deprived  of  her  maritime  periphery.48 

The  habits  of  a  people  and  the  consequent  demands  which 
they  make  upon  their  environment  must  be  taken  into  account  KgitteTe^ 
in  judging  whether  or  not  a  restricted  geographical  location  and  mar- 
is  indicative  of  a  retrograde  process.     The  narrow  marginal  ginal  loca- 
distribution  of  the  Haida,  Tlingit,  and  Tsimshean  Indians  on  tion- 
the  islands  and  coastal  strips  of  northwestern  America  means 
simply  the  selection  of  sites  most  congenial  to  those  inveterate 
fisher  tribes.     The  fact  that  the  English  in  the  vicinity  of 
the  Newfoundland  Banks  settled  on  a  narrow  rim  of  coast  in 
order  to  exploit  the  fisheries,  while  the  French  peasants  pene- 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 


Prevalence 
of  ethnic 
islands  of 
decline. 


trated  into  the  interior  forests  and  farmlands  of  Canada,  was 
no  sign  of  territorial  decline.  English  and  French  were  both 
on  the  forward  march,  each  in  their  own  way.  The  scattered 
peripheral  location  of  the  Phoenician  trading  stations  and 
later  of  the  Greek  colonies  on  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean 
was  the  expression  of  the  trading  and  maritime  activity  of 
those  two  peoples.  Centuries  later  a  similar  distribution 
of  Arab  posts  along  the  coast  of  East  Africa,  Mada- 
gascar and  the  western  islands  of  the  Sunda  Archipelago  in- 
dicated the  great  commercial  expansion  of  the  Mohammedan 
traders  of  Oman  and  Yemen.  The  lack  came  when  this  distri- 
bution, normal  as  a  preliminary  form,  bore  no  fruit  in  the  oc- 
cupation of  wide  territorial  bases.  [See  map  page  251.] 

In  general,  however,  any  piecemeal  or  marginal  location 
of  a  people  justifies  the  question  as  to  whether  it  results  from 
encroachment,  dismemberment,  and  consequently  national 
or  racial  decline.  This  inference  as  a  rule  strikes  the 
truth.  The  abundance  of  such  ethnic  islands  and  reefs — 
some  scarcely  distinguishable  above  the  flood  of  the  surround- 
ing population — is  due  to  the  fact  that  when  the  area  of  dis- 
tribution of  any  life  form,  whether  racial  or  merely  animal, 
is  for  any  cause  reduced,  it  does  not  merely  contract  but  breaks 
up  into  detached  fragments.  These  isolated  groups  often 
give  the  impression  of  being  emigrants  from  the  original  home 
who,  in  some  earlier  period  of  expansion,  had  occupied  this 
outlying  territory.  At  the  dawn  of  western  European  his- 
tory, Gaul  was  the  largest  and  most  compact  area  of  Celtic 
speech.  For  this  reason  it  has  been  regarded  as  the  land 
whence  sprang  the  Celts  of  Britain,  the  Iberian  Peninsula, 
the  Alps  and  northern  Italy.  Freeman  thinks  that  the  Gauls 
of  the  Danube  and  Po  valleys  were  detachments  whicji  had 
been  left  behind  in  the  great  Celtic  migration  toward  the 
west  ;49  but  does  not  consider  the  possibility  of  a  once  far  more 
extensive  Celtic  area,  which,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  once  reached 
eastward  to  the  Weser  River  and  the  Stidetes  Mountains 
and  was  later  dismembered.50  The  islands  of  Celtic  speech 
which  now  mark  the  western  flank  of  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland  are  shrunken  fragments  of  a  Celtic  linguistic  arc-a. 
which,  as  place-names  indicate,  once  comprised  the  whole  coun- 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  165 

try.51  Similarly,  all  over  Russia  Finnic  place-names  testify 
to  the  former  occupation  of  the  country  by  a  people  now  sub- 
merged by  the  immigrant  Slavs,  except  where  they  emerge  in 
ethnic  islands  in  the  far  north  and  about  the  elbow  of  the 
Volga.52  [See  map  page  225.]  Beyond  the  compact  area 
of  the  Melanesian  race  occupying  New  Guinea  and  the  islands 
eastward  to  the  Fiji  and  Loyalty  groups,  are  found  scat- 
tered patches  of  negroid  folk  far  to  the  westward,  relegated 
to  the  interiors  of  islands  and  peninsulas.  The  dispersed 
and  fragmentary  distribution  of  this  negroid  stock  has  sug- 
gested that  it  formed  the  older  and  primitive  race  of  a  wide 
region  extending  from  India  to  Fiji  and  possibly  even 
beyond.53 

Ethnic  or  political  islands  of  decline  can  be  distinguished  Contrast 
from   islands   of   expansion   by   various   marks.      When   sur-    e    ' 
vivals   of  an  inferior  people,  they   are  generally  character-  ^i^ds  of 
ized    by    inaccessible    or    unfavorable    geographic    location,  growth 
When  remnants  of  former  large  colonial  possessions  of  mod-  and  de- 
em civilized  nations,  they  are  characterized  by  good  or  even 
excellent  location,  but  lack  a  big  compact  territory  nearby 
to  which  they  stand  in  the  relation  of  outpost.      Such  are 
the   Portuguese    fragments    on   the   west    coast    of   India   at 
Goa,  Damaon,  and  Diu  Island,  and  the  Portuguese  half  of 
the  island  of  Timor  with  the  islet  of  Kambing  in  the  East 
Indies.     Such  also  are  the  remnants  of  the  French  empire 
in  India,  founded  by  the  genius  of  Frai^ois  Dupleix,  which 
are  located  on  the  seaboard  at  Chandarnagar,  Carical,  Pondi- 
cherry,  Yanaon  and  Mahe.     They  tell  the  geographer  a  far 
different  story  from  that  of  the  small  detached  French  hold- 
ing of  Kwang-chan  Bay  and  Nao-chan  Island  on  the  south- 
ern coast  of  China,  which  are  outposts  of  the  vigorous  French 
colony  of  Tongking. 

The  scattered  islands  of  an  intrusive  people,  bent  upon 
conquest  or  colonization,  are  distinguished  by  a  choice  of 
sites  favorable  to  growth  and  consolidation,  and  by  the 
rapid  extension  of  their  boundaries  until  that  consolidation 
is  achieved ;  while  the  people  themselves  give  signs  of  the 
rapid  differentiation  incident  to  adaptation  to  a  new  environ- 
ment. 


166  GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION 

NOTES  TO   CHAPTER  V 

1.  Anatole  Leroy-Beaulieu,  The  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  Vol.  I,  pp.  98- 
101.     New  York,   1893. 

2.  George  Adam  Smith,  Historical  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,  pp. 
5-8,  12,  13,  19-28,  37.     New  York,   1 

3.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  272-273.     New  York,  1899. 

4.  Monette,  History  of  the  Valley  of  the  Mississippi,  Vol.  II,  chap.  I. 
1846. 

5.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  336,  334.     Map.  p.  53.     New 
York,  1899. 

6.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  p.   137.     London,  1903. 

7.  Eleventh  Census,  Report  for  Alaska,  pp.  66,  67,  70.     Washington, 
1893. 

8.  Livingstone,  Travels  in  South  Africa,  p.  56.     New  York,  1858. 

9.  Anatole  Leroy-Beaulieu,  The  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  Vol  1,  pp.  36, 
108.     New  Yoil..  1893. 

10.  Boyd  Alexander,  From  the  Niger  to  the  Nile,  Vol.  II,  pp.  127-130, 
170.     London,  1907. 

11.  James  Bryce,  Impressions  of  South  Africa,  pp.  147,  150,  170-173. 
New  York,  1897. 

12.  Alexander  P.  Engelhardt,  A  Russian  Province  of  the  North,  pp. 
135,  140-147,  165,   170.     Translated  from  the  Russian.     London,   1899. 

13.  For  full  and  able  discussion,  see  II.  J.  Mackinder,  The  Geographical 
Pivot  of  History,  in  the  Geographical  Journal,  April,  1904.     London. 

14.  The    Anglo-Russian    Agreement,   with   map,   in    The   Independent, 
October,  10,  1907. 

15.  Spencer  and  Gillen,  The  Northern  Tribes  of  Central  Australia,  p. 
xii.     London,  1904. 

16.  Census  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  Vol.  I,  p.  526;  Vol.  II,  pp.  34-35, 
50-52  and  map.     Washington,  1903. 

17.  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  11,  pp.  225-226.     New  York,  1859. 

18.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  The  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  402-410,  map.     New  York, 
1899. 

19.  Frederick  J.  Turner,  The  Significance  of  the  Frontier  in  American 
History,  in  the  Annual  Eeport  of  the  American  Historical  Association 
for  1893,  pp.  199-227.      Washington,  1894. 

20.  Hugh  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  pp.  150-152.     New  York, 
1902. 

21.  W.  E.  Griffis,  The  Mikado's  Empire,  Vol.  I,  pp.  75,  83.    New  York, 
1903.     Henry  Dyer,  Dai  Nippon,  pp.  59,  69.    New  York,  1904. 

22.  Norway,  Official  Publication,  pp.  4,  83,  99,  and  map.     Christiauia, 
1900. 

23.  D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer  East,  pp.  221-224,  map.    London,  1902. 

24.  Heinrich  von  Treitschke,  Politik,  Vol.  I,  p.  224.     Leipzig,  1897. 

25.  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  I,  pp.  189  191.     New  York, 
1902-1906. 

26.  Eleventh  Census,  Eeport  on  the  Indians,  pp.  36-37.     Washington, 
1894. 

27.  John   Fiske,   Old   Virginia   and   her  Neighbors,   Vol.    II,   p.    299. 
Boston,  1897. 


GEOGRAPHICAL  LOCATION  167 

28.  Eleventh  Census,  Report  on  the  Indians,  pp.  30-31.     Washington, 
1894. 

29.  Dr.  William  Junker,  Travels  in  Africa,  1882-1886,  pp.  30,  31,  34, 
37,  44,  50-54,  64,  94-95,  140,  145-148.     London,  1892. 

30.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  193-195.     London,  1896- 
1898. 

31.  Anatole  Leroy-Beaulieu,  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  Vol.  I,  pp.  124-129. 
New  York,  1893. 

32.  D.  G.  Brinton,  The  American  Race,  p.  266.     Philadelphia,   1901. 

33.  Helmolt,    History   of   the   World,   Vol.    Ill,   pp.    484,   485.      New 
York,  1902-06. 

34.  Nordeuskiold,  The  Voyage  of  the  Vega,  p.  291.     New  York,  1882. 

35.  H.  M.  Stanley,  Through  the  Dark  Continent,  Vol.  II,  pp.  100-103, 
218.  In  Darkest  Africa,  Vol.  I,  pp.  208,  261,  374-375;  Vol.  II,  pp.  40-44. 

36.  Georg  Schweinfurth,  The  Heart  of  Africa,  Vol.  II,  chap.  XI,  3rd 
edition,  London. 

37.  Census  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  Vol.  I,  pp.  411,  436,  532,  533. 
Washington,  1903. 

38.  Quatrefages,  The  Pygmies,  pp.  24-51.     New  York,  1895. 

39.  Sir  T.  H.  Holdich,  India,  pp.  202-203,  map.     London,  1905. 

40.  Darwin,  Origin  of  Species,  Vol.  II,  chap.  XII.     New  York,  1895. 

41.  Anatole  Leroy-Beaulieu,  The  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  Vol.  I,  pp.  66-70, 
maps  facing  pp.  64  and  80.     New  York,  1893. 

42.  Eleventh  Census  of  the  United  States,  Seport  on  Population,  Part 
I,  map  p.  23.     Washington,  1894. 

43.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  Chapters  7,  8,  11.   New  York,  1899. 

44.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  910.     New  York,  1902. 

45.  Ibid.,  pp.  832,  836. 

46.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  175,  257.    London,  1896- 
1898. 

47.  E.  C.   Semple,  American   History  and  its  Geographic   Conditions, 
pp.  280-287.     Boston,  1903. 

48.  C.   E.  Akers,  History  of   South  America,   1854-1894,  pp.  501-502, 
556-562.     New  York,  1904. 

49.  E.  A.  Freeman,  Historical  Geography  of  Europe,  p.  14.     London, 
1882. 

50.  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  125-132,  map.     New 
York,  1902-1906.     Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  274,  297,  308,  472-473. 
New  York,  1899. 

51.  H.  J.  Mackinder,  Britain  and  the  British  Seas,  pp.  183-191.     Lon- 
don, 1904. 

52.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  26,  353,  361-365.    Map.    New 
York,  1899. 

53.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  214-218.     London,  1896-1898. 


CHAPTER  VI 


The  size 
of  the 
earth. 


Relation 
of  area  to 
life. 


EVERY  consideration  of  geographical  area  must  take  as 
its  starting  point  the  199,000,000  square  miles  (510,000,000 
square  kilometers)  of  the  earth's  surface.  Though  some 
8,000,000  square  miles  (21,000,000  square  kilometers)  about 
the  poles  remain  unexplored,  and  only  the  twenty-eight  per 
cent,  of  the  total  constituting  the  land  area  is  the  actual 
habitat  of  man,  still  the  earth  as  a  whole  is  his  planet.  Its 
surface  fixes  the  limits  of  his  possible  dwelling  place,  the 
range  of  his  voyages  and  migrations,  the  distribution  of  ani- 
mals and  plants  on  which  he  must  depend.  These  conditions 
he  has  shared  with  all  forms  of  life  from  the  amoeba  to  the 
civilized  nation.  The  earth's  superficial  area  is  the  primal 
and  immutable  condition  of  earth-born,  earth-bound  man; 
it  is  the  common  soil  whence  is  sprung  our  common  humanity. 
Nations  belong  to  countries  and  races  to  continents,  but 
humanity  belongs  to  the  whole  world.  Naught  but  the  united 
forces  of  the  whole  earth  could  have  produced  this  single 
species  of  a  single  genus  which  we  call  Man. 

The  relation  of  life  to  the  earth's  area  is  a  fundamental 
question  of  bio-geography.  The  amount  of  that  area  avail- 
able for  terrestrial  life,  the  proportion  of  land  and  water, 
the  reduction  or  enlargement  of  the  available  surface  by 
the  operation  of  great  cosmic  forces,  all  enter  into  this 
problem,  which  changes  from  one  geologic  period  to  another. 
The  present  limited  plant  life  of  the  Arctic  regions  is  the 
impoverished  successor  of  a  vegetation  abundant  enough  at 
the  eighty-third  parallel  to  produce  coal.  That  was  in  the 
Genial  Period,  when  the  northern  hemisphere  with  its  broad 
land-masses  presented  a  far  larger  area  for  the  support  of 
life  than  to-day.  Then  the  Glacial  Period  spread  an  ice- 
sheet  from  the  North  Pole  to  approximately  the  fiftieth 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  169 

parallel,  forced  back  life  to  the  lower  latitudes,  and  con- 
fined the  bio-sphere  to  the  smaller  land-masses  of  the  southern 
hemisphere  and  a  girdle  north  of  the  equator.  The  sum 
total  of  life  on  the  globe  was  greatly  reduced  at  the  height 
of  glaciation,  and  since  the  retreat  of  the  ice  has  probably 
never  regained  the  abundance  of  the  Middle  Tertiary ;  so 
that  our  period  is  probably  one  of  relative  impoverishment 
and  faulty  adjustment  both  of  life  to  life  and  of  life  to 
physical  environment.1  The  continent  of  North  America 
contained  a  small  vital  area  during  the  Later  Cretaceous 
Period,  when  a  notable  encroachment  of  the  sea  submerged 
the  Atlantic  coastal  plain,  large  sections  of  the  Pacific  coast, 
the  Great  Plains,  Texas  and  the  adjacent  Gulf  plain  up  the 
Mississippi  Valley  to  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio.2 

The  task  of  estimating  the  area  supporting  terrestrial  Area  and 
life  which  the  earth  presented  at  any  given  time  is  an  im-  . 
portant  one,  not  only  because  the  amount  of  life  depends 
upon  this  area,  but  because  every  increase  of  available  area 
tends  to  multiply  conditions  favorable  to  variation.  Darwin 
shows  that  largeness  of  area,  more  than  anything  else,  affords 
the  best  conditions  for  rapid  and  improved  variation  through 
natural  selection ;  because  a  large  area  supports  a  larger 
number  of  individuals  in  whom  chance  variations,  advanta- 
geous in  the  struggle  for  existence,  appear  oftener  than  in  a 
small  group.  This  position  is  maintained  also  by  the  most 
recent  evolutionists.3 

On  purely  geographical  grounds,  also,  a  large  area  stimu- 
lates differentiation  by  presenting  a  greater  diversity  of 
natural  conditions,  each  of  which  tends  to  produce  its  appro- 
priate species  or  variety.4  Consider  the  different  environ- 
ments found  in  a  vast  and  varied  continent  like  Eurasia, 
which  extends  from  the  equator  far  beyond  the  Arctic  Circle, 
as  compared  with  a  small  land-mass  like  Australia,  relatively 
monotonous  in  its  geographic  conditions;  and  observe  how 
much  farther  evolution  has  progressed  in  the  one  than  in 
the  other,  in  point  of  animal  forms,  races  and  civilization. 
If  we  hold  with  Moritz  Wagner  and  others  that  isolation  in 
naturally  defined  regions,  alternating  with  periods  of  migra- 
tion, offers  the  necessary  condition  for  the  rapid  evolution 


170 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 


The 

struggle 
for  space. 


Area  an 
index  of 
social  and 
political 
develop- 
ment. 


of  type  forms,  and  thus  go  farther  than  Darwin,  who  regards 
isolation  merely  as  a  fortunate  contributory  circumstance, 
we  find  that  for  the  evolution  of  mankind  it  is  large  areas 
like  Eurasia  which  afford  the  greatest  number  and  variety 
of  these  naturally  segregated  habitats,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  best  opportunity  for  vast  historical  movements. 

Evolution  needs  room  but  finds  the  earth's  surface  limited. 
Everywhere  old  and  new  forms  of  life  live  side  by  side  in 
deadly  competition ;  but  the  later  improved  variety  multi- 
plies and  spreads  at  the  cost  of  less  favored  types.  The 
struggle  for  existence  means  a  struggle  for  space.5  This  is 
true  of  man  and  the  lower  animals.  A  superior  people, 
invading  the  territory  of  its  weaker  savage  neighbors,  robs 
them  of  their  land,  forces  them  back  into  corners  too  small 
for  their  support,  and  continues  to  encroach  even  upon  this 
meager  possession,  till  the  weaker  finally  loses  the  last  rem- 
nant of  its  domain,  is  literally  crowded  off  the  earth,  becomes 
extinct  as  the  Tasmanians  and  so  many  Indian  tribes  have 
done.6  The  superiority  of  such  expansionists  consists  prima- 
rily in  their  greater  ability  to  appropriate,  thorough!}-  utilize 
and  populate  a  territory.  Hence  this  is  the  faculty  by  which 
they  hasten  the  extinction  of  the  weaker;  and  since  this 
superiority  is  peculiar  to  the  higher  stages  of  civilization, 
the  higher  stages  inevitably  supplant  the  lower. 

The  successive  stages  of  social  development — savage, 
pastoral  nomadic,  agricultural,  and  industrial — represent  in- 
creasing density  of  population,  increasing  numerical  strength 
of  the  social  group,  and  finally  increasing  geographical  area, 
resulting  in  a  vastly  enlarged  social  group  or  state. 
Increase  in  the  population  of  a  given  land  is  accompanied  by 
a  decrease  in  the  share  which  each  individual  can  claim  as  his 
own.  This  progressive  readjustment  to  a  smaller  proportion 
of  land  brings  in  its  train  the  evolution  of  all  economic  and 
social  processes,  reacting  again  favorably  on  density  of 
population  and  resulting  eventually  in  the  greatly  increased 
social  group  and  enlarged  territory  of  the  modern  civilized 
state.  Hence  we  may  lay  down  the  rule  that  change  in  areal 
relations,  both  of  the  individual  to  his  decreasing  quota  of 
land,  and  of  the  state  to  its  increasing  quota  of  the  earth's 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  171 

surface  is  an  important  index  of  social  and  political  evolu- 
tion. Therefore  the  rise  and  decline  not  only  of  peoples  but 
of  whole  civilizations  have  depended  upon  their  relations  to 
area.  Therefore  problems  of  area,  such  as  the  expansion  of 
a  small  territory,  the  economic  and  political  mastery  of  a 
large  one,  dominate  all  history. 

Humanity's  area  of  distribution  and  historical  movement  The  Oikou- 
we  call  the  Oikoumene.  It  forms  a  girdle  around  the  earth  mene- 
between  the  two  polar  regions,  and  embraces  the  Tropics,  the 
Temperate  Zones,  and  a  part  of  the  North  Frigid,  in  all, 
five-sixths  of  the  earth's  surface.  This  area  of  distribution 
is  unusually  large.  Few  other  living  species  so  nearly  per- 
meate the  whole  vital  area,  and  many  of  these  have  reached 
their  wide  expansion  only  in  the  company  of  man.  Only 
about  49,000,000  square  miles  (125,000,000  square  kilo- 
meters) of  the  Oikoumene  is  land  and  therefore  constitutes 
properly  the  habitat  of  man.  But  just  as  we  cannot  under- 
stand a  nation  from  the  study  of  its  own  country  alone,  but 
must  take  into  consideration  the  wider  area  of  its  spreading 
activities,  so  we  cannot  understand  mankind  without  includ- 
ing in  his  world  not  only  his  habitat  but  also  the  vastly  larger 
sphere  of  his  activities,  which  is  almost  identical  with  the 
earth  itself.  The  most  progressive  peoples  to-day  find  their 
scientific,  economic,  religious  and  political  interests  embrac- 
ing the  earth. 

Mankind  has  in  common  with  all  other  forms  of  life  the  Unity 
tendency  toward  expansion.    The  more  adaptable  and  mobile  of  the 
an  organism  is,  the  wider  the  distribution  which  it  attains 
and  the  greater  the  rapidity  with  which  it  displaces  its  weaker     ^  . 
kin.     In  the  most  favored  cases  it  embraces  the  whole  vital 
area  of  the  earth,  leaving  no  space  free  for  the  development 
of  diversity   of   forms,  and  itself  showing  everywhere   only 
superficial  distinctions.    Mankind  has  achieved  such  wide  dis- 
tribution.    Before  his  persistent  intrusions  and  his  mobility, 
the  earth  has  no  longer  any  really  segregated  districts  where 
a  strongly  divergent  type  of  the  man  animal  might  develop. 
Hence  mankind  shows  only  superficial  •  distinctions  of  hair, 
color,  head-form  and  stature  between  its  different  groups.   It 
has  got  beyond  the  point  of  forming  species,  and  is  restricted 


172 


Isolation 
and  dif- 
ferentiation. 


to  the  slighter  variations  of  races.  Even  these  are  few  in 
comparison  with  the  area  of  the  earth's  surface,  and  their 
list  tends  to  decrease.  The  Guanches  and  Tasmanians  have 
vanished,  the  Australians  are  on  the  road  to  extinction ;  and 
when  they  shall  have  disappeared,  there  will  be  one  variety 
the  less  in  humanity.  So  the  process  of  assimilation  ad- 
vances, here  by  the  simple  elimination  of  weaker  divergent 
types  of  men,  there  by  amalgamation  and  absorption  into  the 
stock  of  the  stronger. 

This  unity  of  the  human  species  has  been  achieved  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that,  owing  to  the  three-fold  predominance  of 
the  water  surface  of  the  globe,  the  land  surface  appears  as 
detached  fragments  which  rise  as  islands  from  the  surround- 
ing ocean.  Among  these  fragments  we  have  every  gradation 
in  size,  from  the  continuous  continental  mass  of  Iv.'ra-in- 
Africa  with  its  31,000,000  square  miles,  the  Americas  with 
15,000,000,  Australia  with  nearly  3,000,000,  Madagascar 
with  230,000,  and  New  Zealand  with  104,000,  down  to 
Guam  with  its  199  square  miles,  Ascension  with  58,  Tristan 
da  Cunha  with  45,  and  the  rocky  islet  of  Helgoland  with  its 
scant  150  acres.  All  these  down  to  the  smallest  constitute 
separate  vital  districts. 

Small,  naturally  defined  areas,  whether  their  boundaries 
are  drawn  by  mountains,  sea,  or  by  both,  always  harbor 
small  but  markedly  individual  peoples,  as  also  peculiar  or 
endemic  animal  forms,  whose  differentiation  varies  with  the 
degree  of  isolation.  Such  peoples  can  be  found  over  and  over 
again  in  islands,  peninsulas,  confined  mountain  valleys,  or 
desert-rimmed  oases.  The  cause  lies  in  the  barriers  to  ex- 
pansion and  to  accessions  of  population  from  without  which 
confront  such  peoples  on  every  side.  Broad,  uniform  con- 
tinental areas,  on  the  other  hand,  where  nature  has  erected 
no  such  obstacles  are  the  habitats  of  wide-spread  peoples, 
monotonous  in  type.  The  long  stretch  of  coastal  lowlands 
encircling  the  Arctic  Ocean  and  running  back  into  the  wide 
plains  of  North  America  and  Eurasia  show  a  remarkable 
uniformity  of  animal  and  plant  forms7  and  a  striking  simi- 
larity of  race  through  the  Lapps,  the  Samoyedes  of  northern 
Russia,  the  various  Mongolian  tribes  of  Arctic  Siberia  to  Ber- 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  173 

ing  Strait,  and  the  Eskimo,  that  curiously  transitional  race, 
formerly  classified  as  Mongolian  and  more  recently  as  a 
divergent  Indian  stock;  for  the  Eskimos  are  similar  to  the 
Siberians  in  stature,  features,  coloring,  mode  of  life,  in  every- 
thing but  head-form,  though  even  the  cephalic  indices  ap- 
proach on  the  opposite  shores  of  Bering  Sea.8  Where  geog- 
raphy draws  no  dividing  line,  ethnology  finds  it  difficult  to  do 
so.  Where  the  continental  land-masses  converge  is  found 
similarity  or  even  identity  of  race,  easy  gradations  from  one 
type  to  another ;  where  they  diverge  most  widely  in  the  penin- 
sular extremities  of  South  America,  South  Africa  and  Aus- 
tralia, they  show  the  greatest  dissimilarity  in  their  native 
races,  and  a  corresponding  diversity  in  their  animal  life.9 
Geographical  proximity  combined  with  accessibility  results 
in  similarity  of  human  and  animal  occupants,  while  a  cor- 
responding dissimilarity  is  the  attendant  of  remoteness  or  of 
segregation.  Therefore,  despite  the  distribution  of  mankind 
over  the  total  habitable  area  of  the  earth,  his  penetration  in- 
to its  detached  regions  and  hidden  corners  has  maintained 
such  variations  as  still  exist  in  the  human  family. 

If  the  distribution  of  the  several  races  be  examined  in  the 
light  of  this  conclusion,  it  becomes  apparent  that  the  races  ** 
who  have  succeeded  in  appropriating  only  limited  portions 
of  the  earth's  surface,  though  each  may  be  a  marked  variant 
of  the  human  family,  are  characterized  by  few  inner  diversi- 
ties, either  of  physical  features  or  culture.  Their  subdi- 
visions feel  only  in  a  slight  degree  the  differentiating  effects 
of  geographic  remoteness,  which  in  a  small  area  operates 
with  weakened  force;  and  they  enjoy  few  of  those  diversities 
of  environment  which  stimulate  variation.  They  form 
close  and  distinct  ethnic  unities  also  because  their  scant 
numbers  restrict  the  appearance  of  variations.  The  habitat 
of  the  negro  race  in  Africa  south  of  the  Sahara,  relatively 
small,  limited  in  its  zonal  location  almost  wholly  to  the 
Tropics,  poorly  diversified  both  in  relief  and  contour,  has 
produced  only  a  retarded  and  monotonous  social  development 
based  upon  tropical  agriculture  or  a  low  type  of  pastoral 
life.  The  still  smaller,  still  less  varied  habitat  of  the  Aus- 
tralian race,  again  tropical  or  sub-tropical  in  location,  has 


174 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 


Wide  race 

distribution 
and  inner 
diversities. 


Area  and 

language. 


produced  over  its  whole  extent  only  one  grade  of  civilization 
and  that  the  lowest,  one  physical,  mental  and  moral  type.10 

The  Mongoloid  area  of  distribution,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  so  large  that  it  necessarily  includes  a  great  range  of 
climates  and  variety  of  geographic  conditions.  [Maps  pages 
103  and  225.]  Representatives  of  this  race,  reflecting  their 
diversified  habitats,  show  many  ethnic  differentiations.  They 
reveal  also  every  stage  and  phase  of  cultural  development 
from  the  industrialism  of  Japan,  with  its  artistic  and  literary 
concomitants,  to  the  savage  economy  and  retarded  intel- 
lectual life  of  the  Chukches  fisher  tribes  or  the  Giljak 
hunters  of  Sakhalin.  The  white  race,  identified  primarily 
with  Europe,  that  choice  and  diversified  continent,  comprised 
also  a  large  area  of  southwestern  Asia  and  the  northern  third 
of  Africa.  It  thus  extended  from  the  Arctic  Circle  well 
within  the  Tropics.  Its  area  included  every  variety  of  geo- 
graphic condition  and  originally  every  degree  of  cultural 
development;  but  the  rapid  expansion  in  recent  centuries  of 
the  most  advanced  peoples  of  this  race  has  made  them  the 
apostles  of  civilization  to  the  whole  world.  It  has  also  given 
them,  through  the  occupation  of  Australia  and  the  Americas, 
the  widest  distribution  and  the  most  varied  habitats.  As 
agents  of  the  modern  historical  movement,  however,  they  are 
subjected  to  all  its  assimilating  effects,  which  tend  to  counter- 
act the  diversities  born  of  geographic  segregation,  and 
to  raise  all  branches  of  the  white  race  to  one  superior 
cosmopolitan  type.  On  the  other  hand,  the  vast  interna- 
tional division  of  labor  and  specialization  of  production, 
geographically  based  and  entailed  by  advancing  economic 
development,  besides  the  differences  of  traditions  and  ideals 
reaching  far  back  into  an  historic  past  and  rooted  in  the 
land,  will  serve  to  maintain  many  subtle  inner  differences 
between  even  the  most  progressive  nations. 

Hence  the  wide  area  which  Darwin  found  to  be  most  favor- 
able to  improved  variation  and  rapid  evolution  in  animals, 
operates  to  the  same  end  in  human  development,  and  its  in- 
fluence becomes  a  law  of  anthropo-geography.  It  permeates 
the  higher  aspects  of  life.  The  wide,  varied  area  occupied  by 
the  Germanic  tribes  of  Europe  permitted  the  evolution  of  the 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  175 

many  dialects  which  finally  made  the  richness  of  modern  Ger- 
man speech.  English  has  gained  in  vocabulary  and  idiom  with 
every  expansion  of  its  area.  New  territories  mean  to  a  people 
new  pursuits,  new  relations,  new  wants ;  and  all  these  become 
reflected  in  their  speech.  Languages,  like  peoples,  cease  to 
grow  with  national  stagnation.11  To  such  stagnation 
movement  or  expansion  is  the  surest  antidote.  America  will 
in  time  make  its  contribution  to  the  English  tongue.  The 
rich  crop  of  slang  that  springs  up  on  the  frontier  is  not 
wholly  to  be  deplored.  The  crudeness  and  vigor  of  cowboy 
speech  are  marks  of  youth :  they  are  also  promises  of  growth. 
Language  can  not  live  by  dictionary  alone.  It  tends  to  form 
new  variants  with  every  change  of  habitat.  The  French  of 
the  Canadian  habitant  has  absorbed  Indian  and  English 
words,  and  adapted  old  terms  to  new  uses;12  but  it  is  other- 
wise a  survival  of  seventeenth  century  French.  Boer  speech 
in  South  Africa  shows  the  same  thing — absorption  of  new 
Kaffir  and  English  words,  coupled  with  marks  of  retardation 
due  to  isolation.  Religion  in  the  same  way  gains  by  wide 
dispersal.  Christianity  is  one  thing  in  St.  Petersburg,  an- 
other among  the  Copts  of  Cairo,  another  in  Rome,  an- 
other in  London,  and  yet  another  in  Boston.  Buddhism 
takes  on  a  different  color  in  Ceylon,  Tibet,  China 
and  Japan.  In  religion  as  in  other  phases  of  human  devel- 
opment, differentiation  must  mean  eventual  enrichment,  a 
larger  content  of  the  religious  idea,  to  which  each  faith  makes 
its  contribution. 

The  larger  the  area  occupied  by  a  race  or  people,  other  Large  area 
geographic  conditions  being  equal,  the  surer  the  guarantee  a  guaran- 

of  their  permanence,  and  the  less  the  chance  of  their  repres-   e 

.,.,   ..  .      ,         ,  i  .       ,  racial  or 

sion    or    annihilation.      A    broad    geographic    base    means  natjonai 

generally   abundant   command   of   the  resources   of   life  and  penna- 
growth.     Though  for  a  growing  people  of  wide  possessions,  nence. 
like  the  Russians,  the  significance  of  the  land  may  not  be 
obvious,  it  becomes  apparent  enough  in  national  decline  and 
decay;  for  these  even  in  their  incipiency  betray  themselves 
in  a  loss  of  territory.     A  people  which,  voluntarily  or  other- 
wise, renounces  its  hold  upon  its  land  is  on  the  downward 
path.      Nothing    else    could    show    so    plainly    the    national 


176  GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 

vitality  of  Japan  as  her  tenacious  purpose  to  get  back 
Port  Arthur  taken  from  her  by  the  Shimonoseki  treaty  in 
1895.  A  people  may  decrease  in  numbers  without  serious 
consequences  if  it  still  retains  its  land ;  for  herein  lies  its 
resources  by  which  it  may  again  hope  to  grow.  The  re- 
curring loss  of  millions  of  lives  in  China  from  the  wide- 
sweeping  floods  of  the  Hoangho  is  a  passing  episode,  forgotten 
as  soon  as  the  mighty  stream  is  re-embanked  and  the  flooded 
plains  reclaimed.  The  Civil  War  in  the  United  States 
involved  a  temporary  diminution  of  population  and  check  to 
progress,  but  no  lasting  national  weakness  because  no  loss 
of  territory.  But  the  expulsion  of  the  American  Indians 
from  their  well-stocked  hunting  grounds  in  the  Mississippi 
Valley  and  Atlantic  plain  to  more  restricted  and  barren 
lands  in  the  far  West,  and  the  withdrawal  of  the  Australian 
natives  from  the  fertile  coasts  to  the  desert  interior  have 
meant  racial  renunciation  of  the  sources  of  life. 

Hence  a  people  who  are  conquered  and  dislodged  from 
their  territory,  as  were  the  ancient  Britons  by  the  Saxons, 
the  Slavs  from  the  land  between  the  Elbe  and  the  Niemen  In 
the  mediaeval  Germans,  and  the  Kaffirs  in  South  Africa  by 
the  Dutch  and  English,  the  Ainos  from  Hondo  by  the 
Japanese,  and  the  whole  original  Alpine  race  by  the  later 
coming  Teutons  from  the  fertile  valleys  and  plains  into  the 
more  barren  highlands  of  western  Europe,  have  little  or  no 
chance  of  regaining  their  own.  When  conquest  results  not 
in  dislodgement,  but  only  in  the  subjection  of  an  undisturbed 
native  population  to  a  new  ruling  class,  the  vanquished 
retain  their  hold,  only  slightly  impaired,  perhaps,  upon  their 
strength-giving  fields,  recover  themselves,  and  sooner  or 
later  conquer  their  conquerors  either  by  absorption  or  revo- 
lution. This  was  the  history  of  ancient  Egypt  with  its 
Shepherd  Kings,  of  England  with  its  Norman  lords,  of 
Mexico  and  Peru  with  their  Spanish  victors. 

Weakness  A  large  area  throws  around  all  the  life  forms  which  it  sup- 

erf  small         ports  the  protection  of  its  mere  distances,   which   facilitate 
•*»**••  defense  in  competition  with  other  forms,  render  attack  diffi- 

cult, and  afford  room  for  retreat  under  pursuit.  On  tin.- 
other  hand,  the  small  area  is  easily  compassed  by  the  invaders, 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  177 

and  its  inhabitants  soon  brought  to  bay.  Since  there  is  a 
general  correspondence  between  size  of  area  and  number  of 
inhabitants,  where  physical  conditions  and  economic  develop- 
ment are  similar,  a  small  area  involves  a  further  handicap 
of  numerical  weakness  of  population.  Greece  has  always 
suffered  from  the  small  size  of  the  peninsula  and  the  further 
political  dismemberment  entailed  by  its  geographic  sub- 
divisions. Despite  superior  civilization  and  national  heroism, 
it  has  fallen  a  victim  to  almost  every  invader.  Belgium, 
Holland,  Switzerland  exist  as  distinct  nations  only  on  suf- 
ferance. Finland's  history  since  1900  shows  that  the  day  for 
the  national  existence  of  small  peoples  is  passing.13  The 
fragmentary  political  geography  of  the  Danube  basin  gives 
the  geographer  the  impression  of  an  artist's  crayon  studies 
of  details,  destined  later  to  be  incorporated  in  a  finished 
picture.  Their  small  areas  promise  short-lived  autonomy. 
The  recent  absorption  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  by  Austria 
indicates  the  destiny  of  these  Danubian  states  as  fixed  by  the 
law  of  increasing  territorial  aggregates. 

What  is  true  of  states  is  true  also  of  peoples.     The  ex-  Protection 
tinction  of  the  retarded  "provisional  peoples"  of  the  earth  of  large 

progresses  more  rapidly  in  small  groups  than  in  large,  and  aie&  to 

11   •  i  •  n      4-u  4.-  ne  Primitive 

in  small  islands  more  quickly  than  in  continental  areas.     Of 

the  twenty-one  Indian  stocks  or  families  which  have  died  out 
in  the  United  States,  fifteen  belonged  to  the  small  bands  once 
found  in  the  Pacific  coast  states,  and  four  more  were  similar 
fragments  found  on  the  lower  Mississippi  and  its  bayous.14 
[See  map  page  54.]  The  native  Gaunches  of  Teneriffe 
Island  disappeared  long  ago.  The  last  Tasmanian  died  in 
1876.  New  Zealand,  whose  area  is  four  times  that  of  Tas- 
mania, and  therefore  gives  some  respite  before  the  encroach- 
ments of  the  whites,  still  harbors  47,835  Maoris,  or  little  over 
one-third  the  native  population  of  the  island  in  1840. 15  But 
these  compete  for  the  land  with  nearly  one  million  English 
colonists,  and  in  the  limited  area  of  the  islands  they  will  even- 
tually find  no  place  of  retreat  before  the  relentless  white  ad- 
vance. 

To  the  Australians,  on  the  other  hand,  much  inferior  to 
the  Maoris,  the  larger  area  of  their  continent  affords  exten- 


178 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 


Contrast 
of  large 
and  small 
areas  in 
bio-geo- 
graphy. 


sive  deserts  and  steppes  into  which  the  natives  have  withdrawn 
and  whither  the  whites  do  not  care  to  follow.  Hence  mere 
area,  robbed  of  every  other  favorable  geographical  circum- 
stance, has  contributed  to  the  survival  of  the  230,000  natives 
in  Australia.  Similarly  the  Arawaks  were  early  wiped  out 
on  the  island  of  Cuba  and  the  Caribs  on  San  Domingo  and 
the  smaller  Antilles  by  the  truculent  methods  of  the  Spanish 
conquerors,  while  both  stocks  survive  on  the  continent  of 
South  America.  Even  the  truculent  methods  of  the  Spanish 
conquerors  could  make  little  impression  upon  the  relatively 
massive  populations  of  Mexico  and  Peru,  whose  survival  and 
latter-day  recovery  of  independence  can  be  ascribed  largely 
though  not  solely  to  their  ample  territorial  base.  So  the 
vast  area  of  the  United  States  and  Canada  has  afforded  a 
hinterland  of  asylum  to  the  retreating  Indians,  whose  mori- 
bund condition,  especially  in  the  United  States,  is  betrayed 
by  their  scattered  distribution  in  small,  unfavorable  localities. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  vast  extent  of  Arctic  and  sub-Arctic 
Canada,  combined  with  the  adverse  climatic  conditions  of 
the  region,  will  guarantee  the  northern  Indians  a  longer 
survival.  In  Tierra  del  Fuego,  the  encroachments  of  sheep- 
farmers  and  gold-miners  from  Patagonia  twenty  years  ago, 
by  fencing  off  the  land  and  killing  off  the  wild  guanaco, 
threatened  the  existence  of  this  animal  and  of  the  Onas 
natives  of  the  island.  These,  soon  brought  to  bay  in  that 
natural  enclosure,  attacked  the  farmers,  whose  reprisals  be- 
tween 1890  and  1900  reduced  the  number  of  the  Onas  from 
2,000  to  800  souls.16 

The  same  law  holds  good  in  bio-geography :  here,  too,  area 
gives  strength  and  a  small  territorial  foothold  means  weak- 
ness. The  native  flora  and  fauna  of  New  Zealand  seem 
involved  in  the  same  process  of  extinction  as  the  native  race. 
The  Maoris  themselves  have  observed  this  fact  and  applied 
the  principle  to  their  own  obvious  fate.  They  have  seen 
hardy  imported  English  grasses  offering  deadly  competition 
to  the  indigenous  vegetation ;  the  Norway  rat,  entering  by 
European  ships,  extirpating  the  native  variety;  the  Euro- 
pean house  fly,  purposely  imported  and  distributed  to  destroy 
the  noxious  indigenous  species.17  The  same  unequal  combat 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  179 

between  imported  plants  and  animals,  equipped  by  the  fierce 
Iliads  of  continental  areas,  and  the  local  flora  and  fauna  has 
taken  place  on  the  little  island  of  St.  Helena,  to  the  threat- 
ened destruction  of  the  native  forms.18 

The  preponderant  migration  of  animals  from  the  northern 
to  the  southern  hemisphere  is  attributed  by  Darwin  to  the 
greater  extent  of  land  in  the  north,  whereby  the  northern 
types  have  existed  in  greater  numbers  and  have  been  so  per- 
fected through  natural  selection  and  competition,  that  they 
have  surpassed  the  southern  forms  in  dominating  power  and 
therefore  have  encroached  successfully.19  Also  the  races  and 
nations  of  the  northern  continents  have  seriously  invaded 
the  southern  land-masses  and  are  still  expanding.  It  is  the 
largest  continent,  Eurasia,  which  has  been  the  chief  center 
of  dispersal. 

The  Temperate  Zone  of  North  America  will  always  harbor  Political 
a  more  powerful  people  than  the  corresponding  zone  of  °™ 
South  America,  because  the  latter  continent  begins  to  con- 
tract  and  tapers  off  to  a  point  where  the  other  at  the 
northern  Tropic  begins  to  spread  out.  Therefore  North 
America  possesses  more  abundantly  all  the  advantages  accru- 
ing to  a  continent  from  a  location  in  the  Temperate  Zone. 
The  wide  basis  of  the  North  Slavs  in  Russia  and  Siberia  has 
given  them  a  natural  leadership  in  the  whole  Slav  family, 
just  as  the  broad  unbroken  area  of  ever  expanding  Prussia 
gave  that  state  the  ascendency  in  the  German  Empire  over 
the  geographically  partitioned  and  politically  dismembered 
surface  of  southern  Germany.  English  domination  of  the 
United  Kingdom  is  based  not  only  upon  race,  location,  geo- 
graphical features  and  resources,  but  also  on  the  larger 
size  of  England.  So  in  the  United  States,  abolitionist  states- 
men adopted  the  most  effective  means  of  fighting  slavery 
when  they  limited  its  area  by  law,  while  permitting  free 
states  to  go  on  multiplying  in  the  new  territory  of  the  vast 
Northwest. 

In  a  peninsula  political  ascendency  often  falls  to  the  broad 
base  connecting  it  with  the  continent,  because  this  part  alone 
has  the  area  to  support  a  large  population,  and  moreover 
commands  a  large  hinterland,  whence  it  continually  draws 


180  GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 

new  and  invigorating  blood.  The  geographical  basis  of  the 
Aryan  and  later  the  Mongol  supremacy  in  India  was  the  wick- 
zone  of  lowlands  between  the  Indus  and  the  Brahmaputra. 
[See  map  page  103.]  The  only  ancient  Greek  state  ever  able 
to  dominate  the  Balkan  Peninsula  was  non-Hellenic  Mace- 
donia, after  it  had  extended  its  boundaries  to  the  Euxine  and 
the  Adriatic.  To-day  a  much  larger  area  in  this  same  penin- 
sular base  harbors  the  widespread  southern  Slavs,  who  nu- 
merically and  economically  far  outweigh  Albanians  and  Greeks, 
and  who  could  with  ease  achieve  political  domination  over  the 
small  Turkish  minority,  were  it  not  for  the  European  fear  of 
a  Slavic  Bosporus,  and  its  union  with  Russia.  The  Cisalpine 
Gauls  of  the  wide  Po  basin  repeatedly  threatened  the  existence 
of  the  smaller  but  more  civilized  Etruscan  and  Latin  tribes. 
The  latter,  maturing  their  civilization  under  the  concentrat- 
ing influences  of  a  limited  area,  at  last  dominated  the  larger 
Celtic  district  to  the  north.  But  in  the  nineteenth  century 
this  district  took  the  lead  in  the  movement  for  a  United  Italy, 
and  now  exercises  the  strong  influence  in  Italian  affairs  which 
belongs  to  it  by  reason  of  its  superior  area,  location,  and  more 
vigorous  race.  [See  map  of  Italy's  population,  Chap.  XVI.] 
The  broad  territorial  base  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  Slavs, 
Germans  and  Chinese  promises  a  long  ethnic  life,  whereas  the 
narrow  foothold  of  the  Danes,  Dutch,  Greeks,  and  the  Turks 
in  Europe  carries  with  it  the  persistent  risk  of  conquest  and 
absorption  by  a  larger  neighbor.  Such  a  fate  repeatedly 
threatens  these  people,  but  has  thus  far  been  warded  off,  now 
by  the  protection  of  an  isolating  environment,  now  by  the 
diplomatic  intervention  of  some  not  disinterested  power.  The 
scattered  fragments  of  Osman  stock  in  European  Turkey, 
which  constitute  only  about  ten  per  cent,  of  the  total  popu- 
lation, and  are  almost  lost  in  the  surrounding  mass  of  Slavs 
and  Greeks,  provide  a  poor  guarantee  for  the  duration 
of  the  race  and  their  empire  on  European  soil.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  Osmani  who  are  compactly  spread  over  the  whole 
interior  of  Asia  Minor  have  a  better  prospect  of  national 
survival. 

Area  and  An  important  factor  in  the  preservation  of  national  con- 

atiire.        sciousness  and  the  spread  of  national  influence  is  always  a 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  181 

national  language  and  literature.  This  principle  is  recog- 
nized by  the  government  of  the  Czar  in  its  Russification  of 
Finland,20  Poland,  and  the  German  centers  in  the  Baltic 
provinces,  when  it  substitutes  Russian  for  the  local  language 
in  education,  law  courts  and  all  public  offices,  and  restricts  the 
publication  of  local  literature.  The  survival  of  a  language 
and  its  literature  is  intimately  connected  with  area  and  the 
population  which  that  area  can  support.  The  extinction  of 
small,  weak  peoples  has  its  counterpart  in  the  gradual  elimi- 
nation of  dialects  and  languages  having  restricted  territorial 
sway,  whose  fate  is  foreshadowed  by  the  unequal  competition 
of  their  literatures  with  those  of  numerically  stronger  peo- 
ples. An  author  writing  in  a  language  like  the  Danish, 
intelligible  to  only  a  small  public,  can  expect  only  small 
returns  for  his  labor  in  either  influence,  fame,  or  fortune.  The 
return  may  be  so  small  that  it  is  prohibitive.  Hence  we  find 
the  Danish  Hans  Christian  Andersen  and  the  Norwegian 
Ibsen  writing  in  German,  as  do  also  many  Scandinavia  a  scien- 
tists. Georg  Brandes  abandons  his  native  Danish  and  seeks  a 
larger  public  by  making  English  the  language  of  his  books. 
The  incentive  to  follow  a  literary  .career,  especially  if  it 
includes  making  a  living,  is  relatively  weak  among  a  people  of 
only  two  or  three  millions,  but  gains  enormously  among  large 
and  cultivated  peoples,  like  the  seventy  million  German- 
speaking  folk  of  Europe,  or  the  one  hundred  and  thirty  mil- 
lions of  English  speech  scattered  over  the  world.  The  common 
literature  which  represents  the  response  to  this  incentive 
forms  a  bond  of  union  among  the  various  branches  of  these 
peoples,  and  may  be  eventually  productive  of  political  results. 

Growth  has  been  the  law  of  human  societies  since  the  birth  Small  geo- 
of  man's   gregarious   instinct.      It   has   manifested   itself   in  g^P1"0 
the   formation   of  ever  larger  social  groups,  appropriating 


ever  larger  areas.  It  has  registered  itself  geographically  80Cieties. 
in  the  protrusion  of  ethnic  boundaries,  economically  in  more 
intensive  utilization  of  the  land,  socially  in  increasing  density 
of  population,  and  politically  in  the  formation  of  ever  larger 
national  territorial  aggregates.  The  lowest  stages  of  culture 
reveal  small  tribes,  growing  very  slowly  or  at  times  not  at 
all,  disseminated  over  areas  small  in  themselves  but  large  for 


182 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 


Influence 
of  small 
confined 
areas. 


the  number  of  their  inhabitants,  hence  sparsely  populated. 
The  size  of  these  primitive  holdings  depends  upon  the  natural 
food  supply  yielded  by  the  region.  They  assume  wide  dimen- 
sions but  support  groups  of  only  a  few  families  on  the  chill 
rocky  coasts  of  Tierra  del  Fuego  or  the  sterile  plains  of 
central  Australia;  and  they  contract  to  smaller  areas  dotted 
with  fairly  populous  villages  in  the  fertile  districts  of  the 
middle  Congo  or  bordering  the  rich  coast  fishing  grounds  of 
southern  Alaska  and  British  Columbia.  But  always  land 
is  abundant,  and  is  drawn  upon  in  widening  circles  when  the 
food  supply  becomes  inadequate  or  precarious. 
7  Where  nature  presents  barriers  to  far-ranging  food-quests, 
man  is  forced  to  advance  from  the  natural  to  the  artificial 
basis  of  subsistence;  he  leaves  the  chase  for  the  sedentary 
life  of  agriculture.  Extensive  activities  are  replaced  by  in- 
tensive ones,  wide  dispersal  of  tribal  energies  by  concentra- 
tion. The  extensive  forests  and  grassy  plains  of  the  Americas 
supported  abundant  animal  life  and  therefore  afforded  condi- 
tions for  the  long  survival  of  the  hunting  tribes;  nature  put 
no  pressure  upon  man  to  coerce  him  to  progress,  except  in  the 
small  mountain-walled  valleys  of  Peru  and  Mexico,  and  in 
the  restricted  districts  of  isthmian  Central  America.  Here 
game  was  soon  exhausted.  Agriculture  became  an  increasing 
source  of  subsistence  and  was  forced  by  limited  area  out  of 
its  migratory  or  essartage  stage  of  development  into  the  se- 
dentary. As  fields  become  fixed  in  such  enclosed  areas,  so 
do  the  cultivators.  Here  first  population  becomes  relatively 
dense,  and  thereby  necessitates  more  elaborate  social  and 
political  organization  in  order  to  prevent  inner  friction. 

The  geographically  enclosed  district  has  the  further 
advantage  that  its  inhabitants  soon  come  to  know  it  out  to 
its  boundaries,  understand  its  possibilities,  exploit  to  the 
utmost  its  resources,  and  because  of  the  closeness  of  their 
relationship  to  it  and  to  each  other  come  to  develop  a  con- 
scious national  spirit.  The  population,  since  it  cannot  easily 
spread  beyond  the  nature-set  limits,  increases  in  densi'v. 
The  members  of  the  compact  society  react  constantly  upon  one 
another  and  exchange  the  elements  of  civilization.  Thus  the 
small  territory  is  characterized  by  the  early  maturity  of  a 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  183 

highly  individualized  civilization,  which  then,  with  inherent 
power  of  expansion,  proceeds  to  overleap  its  narrow  borders 
and  conquer  for  itself  a  wide  sphere  of  influence.  Hand  in 
hand  with  this  process  goes  political  concentration,  which  aids 
the  subsequent  expansion.  Therefore  islands,  oases,  slender 
coastal  strips  and  mountain  valleys  repeatedly  show  us  small 
peoples  who,  in  their  seclusion,  have  developed  a  tribal  or 
national  consciousness  akin  in  its  intensity  to  clan  feeling. 
This  national  feeling  is  conspicuous  in  the  English,  Japanese, 
Swiss  and  Dutch,  as  it  was  in  the  ancient  city-states  of 
Greece.  The  accompanying  civilization,  once  brought  to 
maturity  in  its  narrow  breeding  place,  spreads  under  favor- 
able geographic  conditions  over  a  much  larger  space,  which 
the  accumulated  race  energy  takes  for  its  field  of  activity. 
The  flower  which  thus  early  blooms  may  soon  fade  and  decay ; 
nevertheless  the  geographically  evolved  national  consciousness 
persists  and  retains  a  certain  power  of  renewal.  This  has 
been  demonstrated  in  the  Italians  and  modern  Greeks,  in 
the  Danes  and  the  Icelanders.  In  the  Jews  it  has  resisted 
exile  from  their  native  land,  complete  political  dissolution, 
and  dispersal  over  the  habitable  world.  Long  and  often  as 
Italy  had  to  submit  to  foreign  dominion,  the  idea  of  the 
national  unity  of  the  peninsula  was  never  lost. 

In  vast  unobstructed  territories,  on  the  other  hand,  the  The  pro- 
evil  of  wide,  sparse  dispersal  is  checked  only  by  natural  increase  C8SS  °* 
of  population  and  the  impinging  of  one  growing  people 
upon  another,  which  restricts  the  territory  of  either.  When 
the  boundary  waste  between  the  small  scattered  tribal  groups 
has  been  occupied,  encroachment  from  the  side  of  the  stronger 
follows;  then  comes  war,  incorporation  of  territory,  amalga- 
mation of  race  and  coalescence,  or  the  extinction  of  the 
weaker.  The  larger  people,  commanding  its  larger  area, 
expands  numerically  and  territorially,  and  continues  to  throw 
out  wider  frontiers,  till  it  meets  insurmountable  natural  ob- 
stacles or  the  confines  of  a  people  strong  as  itself.  After  a 
pause,  during  which  the  existing  area  is  outgrown  and  popu- 
lation begins  to  press  harder  upon  the  limits  of  subsistence, 
the  weight  of  a  nation  is  thrown  against  the  barrier,  be  it 
physical  or  political.  In  consequence,  the  old  boundaries  are 


184*  GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 

enlarged,  either  by  successful  encroachment  upon  a  neighbor, 
or,  in  case  of  defeat,  by  incorporation  in  the  antagonist's 
territory.  But  even  defeat  brings  participation  in  a  larger 
geographic  base,  wider  cooperation,  a  greater  sum  total  of 
common  national  interests,  and  especially  the  protection  of 
the  larger  social  group.  The  Transvaal  and  the  Orange 
Free  State  find  compensation  for  the  loss  of  independence 
by  their  incorporation  in  the  British  Empire,  even  if  grad- 
ual absorption  be  the  destiny  of  the  Boer  stock. 

Area  Of   adjacent    areas   equally    advanced   in    civilization    and 

and  in  density  of  population  but  of  unequal  size,  the  larger  must 

growth.  dominate  because  its  people  have  the  resistance  and  aggres- 
sive force  inherent  in  the  larger  mass.  This  is  the  explanation 
of  the  absorption  of  so  many  colonies  and  conquerors  by 
the  native  races,  when  no  great  cultural  abyss  or  race  an- 
tagonism separates  the  two.  The  long  rule  of  the  Scandi- 
navians in  the  Hebrides  ended  in  their  absorption  by  the 
local  Gaelic  stock,  simply  because  their  settlements  were  too 
small  and  the  number  of  their  women  too  few.  The  lowlands 
on  the  eastern  coasts  of  Scotland  accommodated  larger  bands 
of  Norse,  who  even  to-day  can  be  distinguished  from  the 
neighboring  Scotch  of  the  Highlands ;  but  on  the  rugged 
western  coast,  where  only  small  and  widely  separated  deltas 
at  the  heads  of  the  fiords  offered  a  narrow  foothold  to  the 
invaders,  their  scattered  ethnic  islands  were  soon  inundated 
by  the  contiguous  population.21  The  Teutonic  elements, 
both  English  and  Norwegian,  which  for  centuries  filtered 
into  Ireland,  have  been  swallowed  up  in  the  native  Celtic 
stock,  except  where  religious  antagonisms  served  to  keep  the 
two  apart.  So  the  dominant  Anglo-Saxon  population  of 
England  was  a  solvent  for  the  Norman  French,  and  the 
densely  packed  humanity  of  China  for  their  Manchu 
conquerors. 

On  the  other  hand,  extensive  areas,  like  early  North 
America  and  Australia,  sparsely  inhabited  by  small  scattered 
groups  who  have  only  an  attenuated  connection  with  their 
soil  and  therefore  only  a  feeble  hold  upon  their  land,  cannot 
compete  with  small  areas,  if  these  have  the  dense  and  evenly 
distributed  population  which  ensures  a  firm  tenure  of  the 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  185 

land.  Small,  geographically  confined  areas  foster  this  com- 
pact and  systematic  occupation  on  the  part  of  their  inhabi- 
tants, since  they  put  barriers  in  the  way  of  precipitate  and 
disintegrating  expansion ;  and  this  characteristic  compensates 
in  some  degree  and  for  a  period  at  least  for  the  weakness 
otherwise  inherent  in  the  narrow  territorial  base. 

Every    race,   people,   and   state   has   had   the   history    of  Historical 
progress  from  a  small  to  a  large  area.     All  have  been  small  ^vaE 
in  their  youth.     The  bit  of  land  covered  by  Roma  Quadrata  t    j 
has  given  language,  customs,  laws,  culture,  and  a  faint  strain  areas, 
of  Latin  blood  to  nations  now  occupying  half  a  million  square 
miles  of  Europe.     The  Arab  inundation,  which  flooded  the 
vast  domain  of  the  Caliphs,  traced  back  to  that  spring  of 
ethnic   and   religious   energy   which   welled   up   in   the   arid 
plain   of   Mecca   and   the   Arabian    oases.      The   world-wide 
maritime  expansion  of  the  English-speaking  people  had  its 
starting  point  in  the  lowlands  of  the  Elbe.     The  makers  of 
empire  in  northern  China  were  cradled  in  the  small  highland 
valley  of  the  Wei  River.     The  little  principality  of  Moscow 
•was  the  nucleus  of  the  Russian  Empire. 

Penetration  into  a  people's  remote  past  comes  always  upon 
some  limited  spot  which  has  nurtured  the  young  nation,  and 
reveals  the  fact  that  territorial  expansion  is  the  incontestible 
feature  of  their  history.  This  advance  from  small  to  large 
characterizes  their  political  area,  the  scope  of  their  trade 
relations,  their  spheres  of  activity,  the  size  of  their  known 
world,  and  finally  the  sway  of  their  religions.  Every  religion 
in  its  early  stages  of  development  bears  the  stamp  of  a  narrow 
origin,  traceable  to  the  circumscribed  habitat  of  the  primitive 
social  group,  or  back  of  that  to  the  small  circle  of  lands  con- 
stituting the  known  world  whence  it  sprang.  First  it  is  tribal, 
and  makes  a  distinction  between  my  God  and  thy  God;  but 
even  when  it  has  expanded  to  embody  a  universal  system,  it  still 
retains  vestigial  forms  of  its  narrow  past.  Jerusalem,  Mecca 
and  Rome  remain  the  sacred  goal  of  pilgrimages,  while  the 
vaster  import  of  a  monotheistic  faith  and  the  higher  ethical 
teaching  of  the  brotherhood  of  man  have  encircled  the  world. 

When  religion,  language  and  race  have  spread,  in  their 
wake  comes  the  growing  state.  Everywhere  the  political  area 


186 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 


Gradations 
in  area 
and  in 
develop- 
ment. 


tends  gradually  to  embrace  the  whole  linguistic  area  of  which 
it  forms  a  part,  and  finally  the  yet  larger  race  area.  Only 
the  diplomacy  of  united  Europe  has  availed  to  prevent  France 
from  absorbing  French-speaking  Belgium,  or  Russia  from 
incorporating  into  her  domain  that  vast  Slav  region  extending 
from  the  Drave  and  Danube  almost  to  the  Gulf  of  Corinth, 
now  parcelled  out  among  seven  different  states,  but  bound 
to  the  Muscovite  empire  by  ties  of  related  speech,  by  race  and 
religion.  The  detachment  of  the  various  Danubian  princi- 
palities from  the  uncongenial  dominion  of  the  Turks,  though 
a  dismemberment  of  a  large  political  territory  and  a  seeming 
backward  step,  can  be  regarded  only  as  a  leisurely  prelimin- 
ary for  a  new  territorial  alignment.  History's  movements 
are  unhurried ;  the  backward  step  may  prepare  for  the  longer 
leap  forward.  It  is  impossible  to  resist  the  conclusion  that 
the  vigorous,  reorganized  German  Empire  will  one  day  try  to 
incorporate  the  Germanic  areas  found  in  Austria,  Switzer- 
land and  Holland. 

Throughout  the  life  of  any  people,  from  its  foetal  period 
in  some  small  locality  to  its  well  rounded  adult  era  marked 
by  the  occupation  and  organization  of  a  wide  national  terri- 
tory, gradations  in  area  mark  gradations  of  development. 
And  this  is  true  whether  we  consider  the  compass  of  their 
commercial  exchanges,  the  scope  of  their  maritime  ventures, 
the  extent  of  their  linguistic  area,  the  measure  of  their 
territorial  ambitions,  or  the  range  of  their  intellectual  inter- 
ests and  human  sympathies.  From  land  to  ethics,  the  rule 
holds  good.  Peoples  in  the  lower  stages  of  civilization  have 
contracted  spacial  ideas,  desire  and  need  at  a  given  time 
only  a  limited  territory,  though  they  may  change  that  terri- 
tory often;  they  think  in  small  linear  terms,  have  a  small 
horizon,  a  small  circle  of  contact  with  others,  a  small  range 
of  influence,  only  tribal  sympathies ;  the}'  have  an  exaggerated 
conception  of  their  own  size  and  importance,  because  their 
basis  of  comparison  is  fatally  limited.  With  a  mature,  wide- 
spread people  like  the  English  or  French,  all  this  is  different ; 
they  have  made  the  earth  their  own,  so  far  as  possible. 

Just  because  of  this  universal  tendency  towards  the 
occupation  of  ever  larger  areas  and  the  formation  of  vaster 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  187 

political  aggregates,  in  making  a  sociological  or  political 
estimate  of  different  peoples,  we  should  never  lose  sight  of 
the  fact  that  all  racial  and  national  characteristics  which 
operate  towards  the  absorption  of  more  land  and  impel  to 
political  expansion  are  of  fundamental  value.  A  ship  of 
state  manned  by  such  a  crew  has  its  sails  set  to  catch  the 
winds  of  the  world. 

Territorial  expansion  is  always  preceded  by  an  extension  Prelimi- 
of  the  circle  of  influence  which  a  people  exerts  through  its  nanea  t( 
traders,  its  deep-sea  fishermen,  its  picturesque  marauders 
and  more  respectable  missionaries,  and  earlier  still  by  a  widen-  expansi0n. 
ing  of  its  mere  geographical  horizon  through  fortuitous  or 
systematic  exploration.  The  Northmen  visited  the  coasts  of 
Britain  and  France  first  as  pirates,  then  as  settlers.  Norman 
and  Breton  fishermen  were  drawing  in  their  nets  on  the  Grand 
Bank  of  Newfoundland  thirty  years  before  Cartier  sailed  up 
the  St.  Lawrence.  Japanese  fishing  boats  preceded  Japanese 
colonists  to  the  coasts  of  Yezo.  Trading  fleets  were  the  fore- 
runners of  the  Greek  colonies  along  the  Black  Sea  and  Medi- 
terranean, and  of  Phoenician  settlements  in  North  Africa, 
Sicily  and  Spain.  It  was  in  the  wake  of  trapper  and  fur 
trader  that  English  and  American  pioneer  advanced  across 
our  continent  to  the  Pacific;  just  as  in  French  Canada  Jesuit 
priest  and  voyageur  opened  the  way  for  the  settler.  Re- 
ligious propaganda  was  yoked  with  greed  of  conquest  in 
the  campaigns  of  Cortez  and  Pizarro.  Modern  statesmen 
pushing  a  policy  of  expansion  are  alive  to  the  diplomatic 
possibilities  of  missionaries  endangered  or  their  property 
destroyed.  They  find  a  still  better  asset  to  be  realized  on 
territorially  in  enterprising  capitalists  settled  among  a  weaker 
people,  by  whom  their  property  is  threatened  or  overtaxed, 
or  their  trade  interfered  with.  The  British  acquisition  of 
Hongkong  in  1842  followed  a  war  with  China  to  prevent  the 
exclusion  of  the  English  opium  trade  from  the  Celestial 
Empire.  The  annexation  of  the  Transvaal  resulted  from  the 
expansion  of  English  capitalists  to  the  Rand  mines,  much  as 
the  advance  of  the  United  States  flag  to  the  Hawaiian  Islands 
followed  American  sugar  planters  thither.  American  capital 
in  the  Caribbean  states  of  South  America  has  repeatedly 


188 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 


Signifi- 
cance of 
sphere  of 
activity  or 
influence. 


tried  to  embroil  those  countries  with  the  United  States  gov- 
ernment; and  its  increasing  presence  in  Cuba  is  undoubtedly 
ominous  for  the  independence  of  the  island,  because  with 
capital  go  men  and  influence. 

When  the  foreign  investor  is  not  a  corporation  but  a 
government,  the  expanding  commercial  influence  looks  still 
more  surely  to  tangible  political  results ;  because  such  na- 
tional enterprises  have  at  bottom  a  political  motive,  however 
much  overlaid  by  an  economic  exterior.  When  the  British 
government  secured  a  working  maj  ority  of  the  Suez  Canal  stock, 
it  sealed  the  fate  of  Egypt  to  become  ultimately  a  province 
of  the  British  Empire.  Russian  railroads  in  Manchuria  'were 
the  well-selected  tool  for  the  Russification  and  final  annexation 
of  the  province.  The  weight  of  American  national  enterprise 
in  the  Panama  Canal  Zone  sufficed  to  split  off  from  the 
Colombian  federation  a  peripheral  state,  whose  detachment 
is  obviously  a  preliminary  for  eventual  incorporation  into 
United  States  domain.  The  efforts  of  the  German  gov- 
ernment to  secure  from  the  Sultan  of  Turkey  railroad  con- 
cessions through  Asia  Minor  for  German  capitalists  has 
aroused  jealousy  in  financial  and  political  circles  in  St. 
Petersburg,  and  prompted  a  demand  from  the  Russian 
Foreign  Office  upon  Turkey  for  the  privilege  of  constructing 
railroads  through  eastern  Asia  Minor.22 

Beyond  the  home  of  a  people  lies  its  sphere  of  influence 
or  activities,  which  in  the  last  analysis  may  be  taken  as  a 
protest  against  the  narrowness  of  the  domestic  habitat.  It 
represents  the  larger  area  which  the  people  wants  and  which 
in  course  of  time  it  might  advantageously  occupy  or  annex. 
It  embodies  the  effort  to  embrace  more  varied  and  generous 
natural  conditions,  whereby  the  struggle  for  subsistence  may 
be  made  less  hard.  Finally,  it  is  an  expression  of  the  law 
that  for  peoples  and  races  the  struggle  for  existence  is  at 
bottom  a  struggle  for  space.  Geography  sees  various 
forms  of  the  historical  movement  as  the  struggle  for  space 
in  which  humanity  has  forever  been  engaged.  In  this  strug- 
gle the  stronger  peoples  have  absorbed  ever  larger  portions 
of  the  earth's  surface.  Hence,  through  continual  subjection  to 
new  conditions  here  or  there  and  to  a  greater  sum  total  of 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  189 

various  conditions,  they  gain  in  power  by  improved  variation, 
as  well  as  numerically  by  the  enlargement  of  their  geographic 
base.  The  Anglo-Saxon  branch  of  the  Teutonic  stock  has, 
by  its  phenomenal  increase,  overspread  sections  of  whole 
continents,  drawn  from  their  varied  soils  nourishment  for 
its  finest  efflorescence,  and  thereby  has  far  out-grown  the 
Germanic  branch  by  which,  at  the  start,  it  was  overshadowed.  .3,03 
The  fact  that  the  British  Empire  comprises  28,615,000 
square  kilometers  or  exactly  one-fifth  of  the  total  land  area 
of  the  earth,  and  that  the  Russian  Empire  contains  over  one- 
seventh,  are  full  of  encouragement  for  Anglo-Saxon  and 
Slav,  but  contain  a  warning  to  the  other  peoples  of  the  world. 

The  large  area  which  misleads  a  primitive  folk  into  exces-  Nature  of 


sive  dispersion  and  the  dissipation  of  their  tribal  powers,  f 
offers  to  an  advanced  people,  who  in  some  circumscribed  ^^  0^ 
habitat  have  learned  the  value  of  land,  the  freest  conditions  countries. 
for  their  development.  A  wide,  unobstructed  territory,  occu- 
pied by  a  sparse  population  of  wandering  tribes  capable  of 
little  resistance  to  conquest  or  encroachment,  affords  the 
most  favorable  conditions  to  an  intruding  superior  race. 
Such  conditions  the  Chinese  found  in  Mongolia  and  Man- 
churia, the  Russians  in  Siberia,  and  European  colonists  in 
the  Americas,  Australia  and  Africa.  Almost  unlimited  space 
and  undeveloped  resources  met  their  land  hunger  and  their 
commercial  ambition.  Their  numerical  growth  was  rapid, 
both  by  the  natural  increase  reflecting  an  abundant  food 
supply,  and  by  accessions  from  the  home  countries.  Expan- 
sion advanced  by  strides.  In  contrast  to  this  care-free,  easy 
development  in  a  new  land,  growth  in  old  countries  like 
Europe  and  the  more  civilized  parts  of  Asia  means  a  slow 
protrusion  of  the  frontier,  made  at  the  cost  of  blood;  it 
means  either  the  absorption  of  the  native  people,  because 
there  are  no  unoccupied  corners  into  which  they  can  be  driven, 
or  the  imposition  upon  them  of  an  unwelcome  rule  exercised  by 
alien  officials.  Witness  the  advance  of  the  Russians  into 
Poland  and  Finland,  of  the  Germans  into  Poland  and 
Alsace-Lorraine,  of  the  Japanese  into  Korea,  and  of  the 
English  into  crowded  India. 

The     rapid     unfolding     of     the     geographical     horizon 


190 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 


Relation 
of  ethnic 
to  political 
expansion. 


in  a  young  land  communicates  to  an  expanding  people 
new  springs  of  mobility,  new  motives  for  movement  out 
and  beyond  the  old  confines,  new  goals  holding  out  new 
and  undreamt  of  benefits.  Life  becomes  fresh,  young,  hope- 
ful. Old  checks  to  natural  increase  of  population  are  re- 
moved. Emigrant  bands  beat  out  new  trails  radiating  from 
the  old  home.  They  go  on  individual  initiative  or  state- 
directed  enterprises;  but  no  matter  which,  the  manifold  life 
in  the  far-away  periphery  reacts  upon  the  center  to  vivify 
and  rejuvenate  it. 

The  laws  of  the  territorial  growth  of  peoples  and  of 
states  are  in  general  the  same.  The  main  differences  between 
the  two  lies  in  the  fact  that  ethnic  expansion,  since  it  depends 
upon  natural  increase,  is  slow,  steady,  and  among  civilized 
peoples  is  subject  to  slight  fluctuations;  while  the  frontiers 
of  a  state,  after  a  long  period  of  permanence,  can  suddenly 
be  advanced  by  conquest  far  beyond  the  ethnic  boundaries, 
often,  however,  only  to  be  as  quickly  lost  again.  Therefore 
the  important  law  may  be  laid  down,  that  the  more  closely 
the  territorial  growth  of  a  state  keeps  pace  with  that  of  its 
people,  and  the  more  nearly  the  political  area  coincides  with 
the  ethnic,  the  greater  is  the  strength  and  stability  of  the 
state.  This  is  the  explanation  of  the  vigor  and  permanence 
of  the  early  English  colonies  in  America.  The  slow  west- 
ward protrusion  of  their  frontier  of  continuous  settlement 
within  the  boundaries  of  the  Allegheny  Mountains  formed 
a  marked  contrast  to  the  wide  sweep  of  French  voyageur 
camp  and  lonely  trading-station  in  the  Canadian  forests, 
and  even  more  to  the  handful  of  priests  and  soldiers  who  for 
three  centuries  kept  an  unsteady  hold  upon  the  Spanish 
empire  in  the  Western  Hemisphere.  The  political  advance  of 
the  United  States  across  the  continent  from  the  Alleghenies 
to  the  Mississippi,  thence  to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and 
thence  to  the  Pacific  was  always  preceded  by  bands  of  enter- 
prising settlers,  who  planted  themselves  beyond  the  frontier 
and  beckoned  to  the  flag  to  follow.  The  great  empires  of 
antiquity  were  enlarged  mechanically  by  conquest  and  an- 
nexation. They  were  mosaics,  not  growths.  The  cohesive 
power  of  a  common  ethnic  bond  was  lacking;  so  was  the 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  191 

modern  substitute  for  this  to  be  found  in  close  economic  inter- 
dependence maintained  by  improved  methods  of  communica- 
tion. Hence  these  empires  soon  broke  up  again  along  lines 
of  old  geographic  and  ethnic  cleavage.  For  Rome,  the 
cementing  power  of  the  Mediterranean  and  the  fairly  unified 
civilization  which  this  enclosed  sea  had  been  evolving  since 
the  dawn  of  Cretan  and  Phanician  trade,  compensated  in 
part  for  the  lack  of  common  speech  and  national  ideals 
throughout  the  political  domain.  But  the  Empire  proved 
in  the  end  to  be  merely  a  mosaic,  easily  broken. 

The  second  point  of  difference  between  the  expansion  of  Relation 
peoples  and  of  states  lies  in  their  respective  relation  to  the  of  people 
political  frontier.  This  confines  the  state  like  a  stockade,  a 
fixing  the  territorial  limits  of  its  administrative  functions ;  KounJarv 
but  for  the  subjects  of  the  state  it  is  an  imaginary  line, 
powerless  to  check  the  range  of  their  activities,  except  when 
a  military  or  tariff  war  is  going  on.  The  state  boundary,  if 
it  coincides  with  a  strong  natural  barrier,  may  for  decades 
or  even  centuries  succeed  in  confining  a  growing  people,  if 
these,  by  intelligent  economy,  increase  the  productivity  of 
the  soil  whose  area  they  are  unable  to  extend.  Yet  the  time 
comes  even  for  these  when  they  must  break  through  the  bar- 
riers and  secure  more  land,  either  by  foreign  conquest  or 
colonization.  The  classic  example  of  the  confinement  of  a 
people  within  its  political  boundaries  is  the  long  isolation 
of  Japan  from  1624  to  1854.  The  pent-up  forces  there, 
accumulated,  in  a  population  which  had  doubled  itself  in 
the  interval  and  which  by  hard  schooling  was  made  receptive 
to  every  improved  economic  method,  manifest  themselves  in 
the  insistent  demand  for  more  land  which  has  permeated 
all  the  recent  policy  of  Japan.  But  the  history  of  Japan  is 
exceptional.  The  rule  is  that  the  growing  people  slowly  but 
continually  overflow  their  political  boundary,  which  then 
advances  to  cover  the  successive  flood  plains  of  the  national 
inundation,  or  yet  farther  to  anticipate  the  next  rise.  This 
has  been  the  history  of  Germany  in  its  progress  eastward 
across  the  Elbe,  the  Oder,  the  Vistula  and  the  Niemen.  The 
dream  of  a  greater  empire  embraces  all  the  German-speaking 
people  from  Switzerland,  Tyrol  and  Steiermark  to  those  out- 


192  GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 

lying  groups  in  the  Baltic  provinces  of  Russia  and  the  related 
offshoot  in  Holland.23     [See  map  page  223.] 

Though  political  boundaries,  especially  where  they  coin- 
cide with  natural  barriers,  may  restrict  the  territorial  growth 
of  a  people,  on  the  other  hand,  political  expansion  is  always 
a  stimulus  to  racial  expansion,  because  it  opens  up  more 
land  and  makes  the  conditions  of  life  easier  for  an  increasing 
people,  by  relieving  congestion  in  the  older  areas.  More 
than  this,  it  materially  aids  while  guiding  and  focusing  the 
out-going  streams  of  population.  Thus  it  keeps  them  con- 
centrated for  the  reinforcement  of  the  nation  in  the  form  of 
colonies,  and  tends  to  reduce  the  political  evil  of  indiscrim- 
inate emigration,  by  which  the  streams  are  dissipated  and 
diverted  to  strengthen  other  nations.  Witness  the  active 
internal  colonization  practiced  by  Germany  in  her  Polish 
territory,2*  by  Russia  in  Siberia,  in  an  effort  to  make  the 
ethnic  boundary  hurry  after  and  overtake  the  political 
frontier. 

Expansion  Just  as  the  development  of  a  people  and  state  is  marked 

of  civili-  by  advance  from  small  to  ever  larger  areas,  so  is  that  of  a 
civilization.  It  may  originate  in  a  small  district;  but  more 
mobile  than  humanity  itself,  it  does  not  remain  confined  to 
one  spot,  but  passes  on  from  individual  to  individual  and 
from  people  to  people.  Greece  served  only  as  a  garden  in 
which  the  flowers  of  Oriental  and  Egyptian  civilization  were 
temporarily  transplanted.  As  soon  as  they  were  modified 
and  adapted  to  their  new  conditions,  their  seed  spread  over 
all  Europe.  The  narrow  area  of  ancient  Greece,  which  caused 
the  early  dissemination  of  its  people  over  the  Mediterranean 
basin,  and  thereby  weakened  the  political  force  of  the  coun- 
try at  home,  was  an  important  factor  in  the  wide  distribution 
of  its  culture.  Commerce,  colonization  and  war  are  vehicles 
of  civilization,  where  favorable  geographic  conditions  open 
the  way  for  trade  in  the  wake  of  the  victorious  army.  The 
imposition  of  Roman  dominion  meant  everywhere  the  gift 
of  Roman  civilization.  The  Crusaders  brought  back  from 
Syria  more  than  their  scars  and  their  trophies.  Every  Eu- 
ropean factory  in  China,  every  Hudson  Bay  Company  post  in 
the  wilds  of  northern  Canada,  every  Arab  settlement  in  sav- 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  193 

age  Africa  is  surrounded  by  a  sphere  of  trade;  and  this  in 
turn  is  enclosed  in  a  wider  sphere  of  influence  through  which 
its  civilization,  though  much  diluted,  has  filtered.  The  higher 
the  civilization,  the  wider  the  area  which  it  masters.  The 
manifold  activities  of  a  civilized  people  demand  a  large 
sphere  of  influence,  and  include,  furthermore,  improved  means 
of  communication  which  enable  it  to  control  such  a 
sphere. 

Even  a  relatively  low  civilization  may  spread  over  a  vast 
area  if  carried  by  a  highly  mobile  people.  Mohammedanism, 
which  embodies  a  cultural  system  as  well  as  a  religion,  found 
its  vehicles  of  dispersal  in  the  pastoral  nomads  occupying 
the  arid  land  of  northern  Africa  and  western  Asia,  and  thus 
spread  from  the  Senegal  River  to  Chinese  Turkestan.  It  was 
carried  by  the  maritime  Arabs  of  Oman  and  Yemen  to 
Malacca  and  Sumatra,  where  it  was  communicated  to  the  sea- 
faring Malays.  These  island  folk,  who  approximate  the  most 
highly  civilized  peoples  in  their  nautical  efficiency,  distributed 
the  meager  elements  of  Mohammedan  civilization  over  the 
Malay  Archipelago.  [See  map  of  the  Religions  of  the  East- 
ern Hemisphere,  in  chapter  XIV.] 

The  larger  the  area  which  a  civilized  nation  occupies,  the  Cultural 
more  numerous  are  its  points  of  contact  with  other  peoples,  advantages 
and  the  less  likely  is  there  to  be  a  premature  crystallization  of  °    _  &e 

its  civilization  from  isolation.     Extension  of  area  on  a  large 

>    area. 

scale  means  eventually  extension  of  the  seaboard  and  access 
to  those  multiform  international  relations  which  the  ocean 
highway  confers.  The  world  wide  expansion  of  the  British 
Empire  has  given  it  at  every  outward  step  wider  oceanic  con- 
tact and  eventually  a  cosmopolitan  civilization.  The  same 
thing  is  true  of  the  other  great  colonial  empires  of  history, 
whether  Portuguese,  Spanish,  Dutch  or  French ;  and  even  of 
the  great  continental  empires,  like  Russia  and  the 
United  States.  The  Russian  advance  across  Siberia,  like 
the  American  advance  across  the  Rockies,  meant  access  to 
the  Pacific,  and  a  modification  of  its  civilization  on  those 
remote  shores. 

A  large  area  means  varied  vicinal  locations  and 
hence  differentiation  of  civilization,  at  least  along  the 


194-  GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 

frontier.  How  rapidly  the  vivifying  influences  of  this  contact 
will  penetrate  into  the  bulk  of  the  interior  depends  upon  size, 
location  as  scattered  or  compact,  and  general  geographic 
conditions  like  navigable  rivers  or  mountains,  which  facilitate 
or  bar  intercourse  with  that  interior.  The  Russian  Empire 
has  eleven  different  nations,  speaking  even  more  different 
languages,  on  its  western  and  southern  frontiers.  Its  long 
line  of  Asiatic  contact  will  inevitably  give  to  the  European 
civilization  transplanted  hither  in  Russian  colonies  a  new 
and  perhaps  not  unfruitful  development.  The  Siberian  citi- 
zen of  future  centuries  may  compare  favorably  with  his 
brother  in  Moscow.  Japan,  even  while  impressing  its  civiliza- 
tion upon  the  reluctant  Koreans,  will  see  itself  modified  by 
the  contact  and  its  culture  differentiated  by  the  transplant- 
ing ;  but  the  content  of  Japanese  civilization  will  be  increased 
by  every  new  variant  thus  formed. 

Politico-  The  larger  the  area  brought  under  one  political  control, 

economic  tne  Jess  tne  handicap  of  internal  friction  and  the  greater 
itages.  j^s  economjc  independence.  Vast  territory  has  enabled  the 
United  States  to  maintain  with  advantage  a  protective  tariff, 
chiefly  because  the  free  trade  within  its  own  borders  was  ex- 
tensive. The  natural  law  of  the  territorial  growth  of  states 
and  peoples  means  an  extension  of  the  areas  in  which  peace 
and  cooperation  are  preserved,  a  relative  reduction  of 
frontiers  and  of  the  military  forces  necessary  to  defend 
them,25  diminution  in  the  sum  total  of  conflicts,  and  a  wider 
removal  of  the  border  battle  fields.  In  place  of  the  continu- 
al warfare  between  petty  tribes  which  prevailed  in  North 
America  four  hundred  years  ago,  we  have  to-day  the  peaceful 
competition  of  the  three  great  nations  which  have  divided 
the  continent  among  them.  The  political  unification  of  the 
Mediterranean  basin  under  the  Roman  Empire  restricted 
wars  to  the  remote  land  frontiers.  The  foreign  wars  of  Russia, 
China,  and  the  United  States  in  the  past  century  have  been 
almost  wholly  confined  to  the  outskirts  of  their  big  domains, 
merely  scratching  the  rim  and  leaving  the  great  interior 
sound  and  undisturbed.  Russia's  immense  area  is  the  mili- 
tary ally  on  which  she  can  most  surely  count.  The  long  road 
to  Moscow  converted  Napoleon's  victory  into  a  defeat ; 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  195 

and  the  resistless  advance  of  the  Japanese  from  Port  Arthur 
to  the  Sungari  River  led  only  to  a  peace  robbed  of  the 
chief  fruits  of  victory.  The  numerous  wars  of  the  British 
Empire  have  been  limited  to  this  or  that  corner,  and  have 
scarcely  affected  the  prosperity  of  the  great  remainder,  so 
that  their  costs  have  been  readily  borne  and  their  wounds 
rapidly  healed. 

The  territorial  expansion  of  peoples  and  states  is  attended  Political 
by    an    evolution    of   their    spacial    conceptions    and    ideals.  area  an^ 
Primitive  peoples,    accustomed   to   dismemberment   in    small    . 
tribal  groups,  bear  all  the  marks  of  territorial  contraction,  horizon 
Their  geographical  horizon  is  usually  fixed  by  the  radius  of 
a  few  days'  march.     Inter-tribal  trade  and  intercourse  reach 
only  rudimentary  development,  under  the  prevailing  condi- 
tions of  mutual  antagonism  and  isolation,  and  hence  contri- 
bute little  to  the  expansion  of  the  horizon.     Knowing  only 
their   little  world,   such   primitive   groups   overestimate  the 
size  and  importance  of  their  own  territory,  and  are  incapable 
of  controlling  an  extensive  area.     This  is  the  testimony  of 
all    travellers    who    have    observed    native    African    states. 
Though  the  race  or  stock  distribution  may  be  wide,  like  that 
of  the  Athapascan  and  Algonquin  Indians,  and  their  war 
paths  long,  like  the  campaigns  of  the  Iroquois  against  the 
Cherokees  of  the  Tennessee  River,  yet  the  unit  of  tribal  ter- 
ritory permanently  occupied  is  never  large. 

Small  naturally  defined  regions,  which  take  the  lead  in  National 
historical  development  because  they  counteract  the  primitive  estimates 
tendency  towards  excessive  dispersal,  are  in  danger  of  teach-  °       ea* 
ing  too  well  their  lesson  of  concentration.     In  course  of  time 
geographic  enclosure  begins  to  betray  its  limitations.     The 
extent  of  a  people's  territory  influences  their  estimate  of  area 
per  se,  determines  how  far  land  shall  be  made  the  basis  of 
their  national  purposes,  fixes  the  territorial  scale  of  their  con- 
quests and  their  political  expansion.     This  is  a  conspicuous 
psychological  effect  of  a  narrow  local  environment.     A  peo- 
ple embedded  for  centuries  in  a  small  district  measure  area 
with  a  short  yardstick.     The  ancient  Greeks  devised  a  phil- 
osophic basis  for  the  advantages  of  the  small  state,  which  is 
extolled  in  the  writings  of  Plato  and  Aristotle.26     Aristotle 


196 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 


Estimates 
of  area 
in  small 
maritime 
states. 


wanted  it  small  enough  "to  be  comprehended  at  one  glance 
of  the  statesman's  eye."  Plato's  ideal  democracy,  by  rigid 
laws  limiting  the  procreative  period  of  women  and  men 
and  providing  for  the  death  of  children  born  out  of  this 
period  or  out  of  wedlock,  restricted  its  free  citizens  to  5,040 
heads  of  families, 2<  all  living  within  reach  of  the  agora,  ana 
all  able  to  judge  from  personal  knowledge  of  a  candidate's 
fitness  for  office.  This  condition  was  possible  only  in  dwarf 
commonwealths  like  the  city-states  of  the  Hellenic  world. 
The  failure  of  the  Greeks  to  build  up  a  political  structure  on 
a  territorial  scale  commensurate  with  their  cultural  achieve- 
ments and  with  the  wide  sphere  of  their  cultural  influence 
can  be  ascribed  chiefly  to  their  inability  to  discard  the  con- 
tracted territorial  ideas  engendered  by  geographic  and  po- 
litical dismemberment.  The  little  Judean  plateau,  which 
gave  birth  to  a  universal  religion,  clung  with  provincial 
bigotry  to  the  narrow  tribal  creed  and  repudiated  the  larger 
faith  of  Christ,  which  found  its  appropriate  field  in  Medi- 
terranean Europe. 

Maritime  peoples  of  small  geographic  base  have  a  charac- 
teristic method  of  expansion  which  reflects  their  low  valuation 
of  area.  Their  limited  amount  of  arable  soil  necessitates 
reliance  upon  foreign  sources  of  supply,  which  are  secured 
by  commerce.  Hence  they  found  trading  stations  or  towns 
among  alien  peoples  on  distant  coasts,  selecting  points  like 
capes  or  inshore  islets  which  can  be  easily  defended  and 
which  at  the  same  time  command  inland  or  maritime  routes 
of  trade.  The  prime  geographic  consideration  is  location, 
natural  and  vicinal.  The  area  of  the  trading  settlement  is 
kept  as  small  as  possible  to  answer  its  immediate  purpose, 
because  it  can  be  more  easily  defended.  2£  Such  were  the 
colonies  of  the  ancient  Phoenicians  and  Greeks  in  the  Medi- 
terranean, of  the  Medieval  Arabs  and  the  Portuguese  on  the 
east  coast  of  Africa  and  in  India.  This  method  reached  its 
ultimate  expression  in  point  of  small  area,  seclusion,  and  local 
autonomy,  perhaps,  in  the  Hanse  factories  in  Norway  and 
Russia.29  But  all  these  widespread  nuclei  of  expansion  re- 
mained barren  of  permanent  national  result,  because  they 
were  designed  for  a  commercial  end,  and  ignored  the  larger 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  197 

national  mission  and  surer  economic  base  found  in  acquisition 
of  territory.  Hence  they  were  short-lived,  succumbing  to 
attack  or  abandoned  on  the  failure  of  local  resources,  which 
were  ruthlessly  exploited. 

That  precocious  development  characteristic  of  small  nat-  Limitations 
urally  defined  areas  shows  its  inherent  weakness  in  the  tend-  °*  small 

*    -„;*       •    i 

ency  to  accept  the  enclosed  area  as  a  nature-made  standard   e 

*"*oncGDtions 
of  national  territory.     The  earlier  a  state  fixes  its  frontier 

without  allowance  for  growth,  the  earlier  comes  the  cessation 
of  its  development.  Therefore  the  geographical  nurseries 
of  civilization  were  infected  with  germs  of  decay.  Such  was 
the  history  of  Egypt,  of  Yemen,  of  Greece,  Crete,  and 
Phoenicia.  These  are  the  regions  which,  as  Carl  Ritter  says, 
have  given  the  whole  fruit  of  their  existence  to  the  world  for 
its  future  use,  have  conferred  upon  the  world  the  trust  which 
they  once  held,  afterward  to  recede,  as  it  were,  from  view.30 
They  were  great  in  the  past,  and  now  they  belong  to 
those  immortal  dead  whose  greatness  has  been  ,  incor- 
porated in  the  world's  life — "the  choir  invisible"  of  the 
nations. 

The  advance  from  a  small,  self-dependent  community  to  Evolution 
interdependent  relations  with  other  peoples,  then  to  ethnic  °*  teni- 
expansion  or  union  of  groups  to  form  a  state  or  empire  is  a   °^a. 
great  turning  point  in   any  history.     Thereby  the  clan  or 
tribe  discards  the  old  paralyzing  seclusion  of  the  primitive 
society    and    the    narrow    habitat,    and    joins    that    march 
of     ethnic,     political     and     cultural     progress     which     has 
covered  larger  and   larger   areas,   and   by   increase   of   com- 
mon   purpose   has    cemented    together    ever    greater   aggre- 
gates. 

Nothing  is  more  significant  in  the  history  of  the  English 
in  America  than  the  rapid  evolution  of  their  spacial  ideals, 
their  abandonment  of  the  small  territorial  conception 
brought  with  them  from  the  mother  country  and  embodied, 
for  example,  in  that  munificent  land  grant,  fifty  by  a  hun- 
dred miles  in  extent,  of  the  first  Virginia  charter  in  1606, 
and  their  progress  to  schemes  of  continental  expansion. 
Every  accession  of  territory  to  the  Thirteen  Colonies  and 
to  the  Republic  gave  an  impulse  to  growth.  Expansion  kept 


198  GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 

pace  with  opportunity.  Only  in  >in.ill  and  isolated  New  Eng- 
land did  the  contracted  provincial  point  of  view  persist.  It 
manifested  itself  in  a  narrow  policy  of  concentration  and 
curtailment,  which  acquiesced  in  the  occlusion  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi River  to  the  Trans-Allegheny  settlements  by  Spain 
in  1787,  and  which  later  opposed  the  purchase  of  the 
Louisiana  territory31  and  the  acquisition  of  the  Philip- 
pines. 

All  peoples  who  have  achieved  wide  expansion  have  de- 
veloped in  the  process  vast  territorial  policies.  This  is  true 
of  the  pastoral  nomads  who  in  different  epochs  have  inun- 
dated Europe,  northern  Africa  and  the  peripheral  lands  of 
Asia,  and  of  the  great  colonial  nations  who  in  a  few  decades 
have  brought  continents  under  their  dominion.  In  nomadic 
hordes  it  is  based  upon  habitual  mobility  and  the  possession 
of  herds,  which  are  at  once  incentive  and  means  for  extend- 
ing the  geographical  horizon  :  but  it  suffers  from  the  evanes- 
cent character  of  nomadic  political  organization,  and  the 
tendency  toward  dismemberment  bred  in  all  pastoral  life 
by  dispersal  over  scattered  grazing  grounds.  Hence  the 
empires  set  up  by  nomad  conquerors  like  the  Saracens  and 
Tartars  soon  fall  apart. 

Colonial  Among  highly  civilized  agricultural  and  industrial  peoples, 

cxPanslon*  on  the  other  hand,  a  vast  territorial  policy  is  at  once  cause 
and  effect  of  national  growth ;  it  is  at  once  an  innate  tend- 
ency and  a  conscious  purpose  tenaciously  followed.  It 
makes  use  of  trade  and  diplomacy,  of  scientific  invention  and 
technical  improvement,  to  achieve  its  aims.  It  becomes  an 
accepted  mark  of  political  vigor  and  an  ideal  even  among 
peoples  who  have  failed  to  enlarge  their  narrow  base.  The 
model  of  Russian  expansion  on  the  Pacific  was  quickly  fol- 
lowed by  awakened  Japan,  stirred  out  of  her  insular  com- 
placence by  the  threat  of  Muscovite  encroachment.  Germany 
and  Italy,  each  strengthened  and  enlarged  as  to  national  out- 
look by  recent  political  unification,  have  elbowed  their  way 
into  the  crowded  colonial  field.  The  French,  though  not  ex- 
pansionists as  individuals,  have  an  excellent  capacity  for 
collective  action  when  directed  by  government.  The  officials 
whom  Louis  XIV  sent  to  Canada  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  199 

tury  executed  large  schemes  of  empire  reflecting  the  dilation 
of  French  frontiers  in  Europe.  These  ideals  of  expansion 
seem  to  have  been  communicated  by  the  power  of  example,  or 
the  threat  of  danger  in  them,  to  the  English  colonists  in 
Virginia  and  Pennsylvania,  and  later  to  Washington  and 
Jefferson. 

The  best  type  of  colonial  expansion  is  found  among  the  The  mind 
English-speaking  people  of  America,  Australia  and  South  of  colonials. 
Africa.  Their  spacial  ideas  are  built  on  a  big  scale.  Dis- 
tances do  not  daunt  them.  The  man  who  could  conceive  a 
Cape-to-Cairo  railroad,  with  all  the  schemes  of  territorial 
aggrandizement  therein  implied,  had  a  mind  that  took  con- 
tinents for  its  units  of  measure ;  and  he  found  a  fitting  mon- 
ument in  a  province  of  imperial  proportions  whereon  was 
inscribed  his  name.  Bryce  tells  us  that  in  South  Africa  the 
social  circle  of  "the  best  people"  includes  Pretoria,  Johan- 
nesburg, Kimberley,  Bloemfontein  and  Cape  Town — a  social 
circle  with  a  diameter  of  a  thousand  miles  ! 32 

The  spirit  of  our  western  frontier,  so  long  as  there  was  a 
frontier,  was  the  spirit  of  movement,  of  the  conquest  of 
space.  It  found  its  expression  in  the  history  of  the  Wilder- 
ness Road  and  the  Oregon  Trail.  When  the  center  of  popu- 
lation in  the  United  States  still  lingered  on  the  shore  of 
Chesapeake  Bay,  and  the  frontier  of  continuous  settlement 
had  not  advanced  beyond  the  present  western  boundary  of 
Virginia  and  Pennsylvania,  the  spacious  mind  of  Thomas  Jef- 
ferson foresaw  the  Mississippi  Valley  as  the  inevitable  and 
necessary  possession  of  the  American  people,  and  looked 
upon  the  trade  of  the  far-off  Columbia  River  as  a  natural 
feeder  of  the  Mississippi  commerce.33 

Emerson's  statement  that  the  vast  size  of  the  United  States 
is  reflected  in  the  big  views  of  its  people  applies  not  only  to 
political  policy,  which  in  the  Monroe  Doctrine  for  the  first 
time  in  history  has  embraced  a  hemisphere ;  nor  is  it  confined 
to  the  big  scale  of  their  economic  processes.  Emerson  had  in 
mind  rather  their  whole  conception  of  national  mission  and 
national  life,  especially  their  legislation,34  for  which  he  antici- 
pated larger  and  more  Catholic  aims  than  obtain  in  Europe, 
hampered  as  it  is  by  countless  political  and  linguistic  bound- 


200 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 


Colonials 
as  road 
builders. 


aries,  and  barred  thereby  from  any  far-reaching  unity  of 
purpose  and  action. 

Canada,  British  South  Africa,  Australia  and  the  United 
States,  though  widely  separated,  have  in  common  a  certain 
wide  outlook  upon  life,  a  continental  element  in  the  national 
mind,  bred  in  their  people  by  their  generous  territories.  The 
American  recognizes  his  kinship  of  mind  with  these  colonial 
Englishmen  as  something  over  and  above  mere  kinship  of 
race.  It  consists  in  their  deep-seated  common  democracy, 
the  democracy  born  in  men  who  till  fields  and  clear  forests, 
not  as  plowmen  and  wood-cutters,  but  as  makers  of  nations. 
It  consists  in  identical  interests  and  points  of  view  in  regard 
to  identical  problems  growing  out  of  the  occupation  and 
development  of  new  and  almost  boundless  territories.  Race 
questions,  paucity  of  labor,  highways  and  railroads,  immigra- 
tion, combinations  of  capital,  excessive  land  holdings,  and 
illegal  appropriation  of  land  on  a  large  scale,  are  problems 
that  meet  them  all.  The  monopolistic  policy  of  the  United 
States  in  regard  to  American  soil  as  embodied  in  the  Monroe 
Doctrine,  and  the  expectation  lurking  in  the  mental  back- 
ground of  every  American  that  his  country  may  eventually 
embrace  the  northern  continent,  find  their  echo  in  Australia's 
plans  for  wider  empire  in  the  Pacific.  The  Commonwealth  of 
Australia  has  succeeded  in  getting  into  its  own  hands  the 
administration  of  British  New  Guinea  (90,500  square  miles.) 
It  has  also  secured  from  the  imperial  government  the  unusual 
privilege  of  settling  the  relations  between  itself  and  the 
islands  of  the  Pacific,  because  it  regards  the  Pacific  question 
as  the  one  question  of  foreign  policy  in  which  its  interests 
are  profoundly  involved.  In  the  same  way  the  British  in 
South  Africa,  sparsely  scattered  though  they  are,  feel  an 
imperative  need  of  further  expansion,  if  their  far-reaching 
schemes  of  commerce  and  empire  are  to  be  realized. 

The  effort  to  annihilate  space  by  improved  means  of  com- 
munication has  absorbed  the  best  intellects  and  energies  of 
expanding  peoples.  The  ancient  Roman,  like  the  Incas  of 
Peru,  built  highways  over  every  part  of  the  empire,  undaunted 
by  natural  obstacles  like  the  Alps  and  Andes.  Modern  ex- 
pansionists are  railroad  builders.  Witness  the  long  list  of 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  201 

strategic  lines,  constructed  or  subsidized  by  various  gov- 
ernments during  the  past  half  century — the  Union  Pacific, 
Central  Pacific,  Canadian  Pacific,  Trans-Siberian,  Cairo- 
Khartoum,  Cape  Town-Zambesi,  and  now  the  proposed  Trans- 
Saharan  road,  designed  to  unite  the  Mediterranean  and 
Guinea  colonies  of  French  Africa.  The  equipment  of  the 
American  roads,  with  their  heavy  rails,  giant  locomotives, 
and  enormous  freight  cars,  reveals  adaptation  to  a  commerce 
that  covers  long  distances  between  strongly  differentiated 
areas  of  production,  and  that  reflects  the  vast  enterprises 
of  this  continental  country.  The  same  story  comes  out  in 
the  ocean  vessels  which  serve  the  trade  of  the  Great  Lakes, 
and  in  the  acres  of  coal  barges  in  a  single  fleet  which  are 
towed  down  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  by  one  mammoth  steel 
tug. 

The  abundant  natural  resources  awaiting  development  in  Practical 
such  big  new  countries  give  to  the  mind  of  the  people  an  ^ent  °* 
essentially  practical  bent.  The  rewards  of  labor  are  so  great  co  om  8' 
that  the  stimulus  to  effort  is  irresistible.  Economic  ques- 
tions take  precedence  of  all  others,  divide  political  parties, 
and  consume  a  large  portion  of  national  legislation ;  while 
purely  political  questions  sink  into  the  background.  Civili- 
zation takes  on  a  material  stamp,  becomes  that  "dollar 
civilization"  which  is  the  scorn  of  the  placid,  paralyzed 
Oriental  or  the  old  world  European.  The  genius  of  colonials 
is  essentially  practical.  Impatience  of  obstacles,  short  cuts 
aiming  at  quick  returns,  wastefulness  of  land,  of  forests,  of 
fuel,  of  everything  but  labor,  have  long  characterized  Amer- 
ican activities.  The  problem  of  an  inadequate  labor  supply  at- 
tended the  sudden  accession  of  territory  opened  for  Euro- 
pean occupation  by  the  discovery  of  America,  and  caused  a  sud- 
den recrudescence  of  slavery,  which  as  an  industrial  system 
had  long  been  outgrown  by  Europe.  It  has  also  given  im- 
mense stimulus  to  invention,  and  to  the  formation  of  labor 
unions,  which  in  the  newest  colonial  fields,  like  Australia  and 
New  Zealand,  have  dominated  the  government  and  given  a 
Utopian  stamp  to  legislation. 

Yet    underlying    and    permeating   this    materialism   is    a 
youthful  idealism.     Transplanted  to  conditions   of  greater 


202  GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA 

opportunity,  the  race  becomes  rejuvenated,  abandons  out- 
grown customs  and  outworn  standards,  experiences  an  en- 
largement of  vision  and  of  hope,  gathers  courage  and  energy 
equal  to  its  task,  manages  somehow  to  hitch  its  wagon  to 
a  star. 


NOTES    TO    CHAPTER    VI 

1.  Chamberlain  and  Salisbury,  Geology,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  483  485.     New 
York,  1906. 

2.  Ibid.,  p.  137  and  map  p.  138. 

3.  Darwin,  Origin  of  Species,  Vol.  I,  chap.  IV,  pp.  124-132;  Vol.  II, 
chap.  XII,  p.  134.     New  York,  1895.     H.  W.  Conn,  The  Method  of  Evo- 
lution, p.  54.     London  and  New  York,  1900. 

4.  Ibid.,  pp.  194-197,  226-227,  239-242,  342-350. 

5.  Eatzel,    Der    Lebensraum,    eine    bio-geographische    Studie,    p.    51. 
Tubingen,  1901. 

6.  D.  G.  Brinton,  Eaces  and  Peoples,  pp.  271,  293-295.     Philadelphia, 
1901. 

7.  A.    Heilprin,    Geographical    Distribution    of    Animals,    pp.    57-61. 
London,  1894. 

8.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  p.  39,  maps  pp.  43,  78.     New  York, 
1899. 

9.  Darwin,  Origin  of  Species,  Vol.  II,  chap.  XII,  pp.  130-131.     New 
York,  1895. 

10.  Richard  Semon,  In  the  Australian  Bush,  p.  211.     London,  1899. 

11.  J.  H.  W.  Stuckenburg,  Sociology,  Vol.  I,  p.  324.     New  York  and 
London,  1903. 

12.  E.  C.  Semple,  The  Influences  of  Geographic  Environment  on  the 
Lower    St.    Lawrence.      Bulletin    American    Geographical    Society,    Vol. 
XXXVI,  pp.  464-465.  1904. 

13.  E.  Limedorfer,  Finland's  Plight,  Forum,  Vol.  XXXII,  pp.  85-93. 

14.  Eleventh  Census,  Report  on  the  Indians,  p.  35.    Washington,  1894. 

15.  A.  R.  Wallace,  Australasia,'  Vol.  I,  p.  454.     London,  1893. 

16.  W.  S.  Barclay,  Life  in  Terra  del  Fuego,  The  Nineteenth  Century, 
Vol.  55,  p.  97.  January,  1904. 

17.  A.  R.  Wallace,  Australasia,  Vol.  I,  pp.  454-455.     London,  1893. 

18.  Darwin,  Origin  of  Species,  Vol.  II,  chap.  XIII,  p.  178.   New  York, 
1895. 

19.  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  chap.  XII,  p.  167-168. 

20.  Nesbit  Bain,  Finland  and  the  Tsar,  Fortnightly  Review,  Vol.  71,  p. 
735.    E.  Limedorfer,  Finland's  Plight,  Forum,  Vol.  32,  pp.  85-93. 

21.  Archibald  Geikie,  The  Scenery  of  Scotland,  pp.  398-399.     London, 
1887. 

22.  Railways  in  Asia  Minor,  Littell's  Living  Age,  Vol.  225,  p.  196. 

23.  J.  Ellis  Barker,  Modern  Germany,  pp.  38-66.     London,  1907. 

24.  The  Polish  Danger  in  Prussia,   Westminster  Review,  Vol.  155,  p. 
375. 

25.  Heinrich  von  Treitschke,  Politik,  Vol.  I,  pp.  223-224.    Leipzig,  1897. 


GEOGRAPHICAL  AREA  203 

26.  Plato,  Critias,  112.     Aristotle,  Politics,  Book  II,  chap.  VII;  Book 
IV,  chap.  IV;  Book  VII,  chap.  IV. 

27.  Plato,  De  Legibus,  Book  V,  chaps.  8,  9,  10,  11. 

28.  Eoscher,  National-Oekonomik  des  Handels  und  Gewerbefleisses,  pp. 
180-187.     Stuttgart,  1899. 

29.  Blanqui,  History  of  Political  Economy,  pp.  150-152.     New  York, 
1880. 

30.  Carl  Ritter,  Comparative  Geography,  p.  63.     New  York,  1865. 

31.  E.  C.  Semple,  American  History  and  its  Geographic  Conditions,  pp. 
42-43,   109,  110.     Boston,   1903. 

32.  James  Bryce,  Impressions  of  South  Africa,  pp.  405-6.    New  York, 
1897. 

33.  P.  L.  Ford,  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  Vol.  VIII.     Letter  to 
John  Bacon,  April  30,  1803 ;  and  Confidential  Message  to  Congress  on 
the  Expedition  to  the  Pacific,  January  18,  1803. 

34.  Emerson,  The  Young  American,  in  Nature  Addresses  and  Lectures, 
pp.  369-371.     Centenary  Edition,  Boston. 


CHAPTER  VII 


The 

boundary 
zone  in 
nature. 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 

NATURE  abhors  fixed  boundary  lines  and  sudden  transi- 
tions ;  all  her  forces  combine  against  them.  Everywhere 
she  keeps  her  borders  melting,  wavering,  advancing,  re- 
treating. If  by  some  cataclysm  sharp  lines  of  demarcation 
are  drawn,  she  straightway  begins  to  blur  them  by  creating 
intermediate  forms,  and  thus  establishes  the  boundary  zone 
which  characterizes  the  inanimate  and  animate  world.  A 
stratum  of  limestone  or  sandstone,  when  brought  into  contact 
with  a  glowing  mass  of  igneous  rock,  undergoes  various 
changes  due  to  the  penetrating  heat  of  the  volcanic  outflow, 
so  that  its  surface  is  metamorphosed  as  far  as  that  heat 
reaches.  The  granite  cliff  slowly  deposits  at  its  base  a  rock- 
waste  slope  to  soften  the  sudden  transition  from  its  perpen- 
dicular surface  to  the  level  plain  at  its  feet.  The  line  where 
a  land-born  river  meets  the  sea  tends  to  become  a  sandbar  or  a 
delta,  created  by  the  river-borne  silt  and  the  wash  of  the 
waves,  a  form  intermediate  between  land  and  sea,  bearing 
the  stamp  of  each,  fluid  in  its  outlines,  ever  growing  by  the 
persistent  accumulation  of  mud,  though  ever  subject  to  inun- 
dation and  destruction  by  the  waters  which  made  it.  The 
alluvial  coastal  hems  that  edge  all  shallow  seas  are  such 
border  zones,  reflecting  in  their  flat,  low  surfaces  the  dead 
level  of  the  ocean,  in  their  composition  the  solid  substance  of 
the  land ;  but  in  the  miniature  waves  imprinted  on  the  sands 
and  the  billows  of  heaped-up  boulders,  the  master  workman 
of  the  deep  leaves  his  mark.  [See  map  page  243.] 

Under  examination,  even  our  familiar  term  coastline  proves 
to  be  only  an  abstraction  with  no  corresponding  reality  in 
nature.  Everywhere,  whether  on  margin  of  lake  or  gulf, 
the  actual  phenomenon  is  a  coast  zone,  alternately  covered 
and  abandoned  by  the  waters,  varying  in  width  from  a  few 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES  205 

inches  to  a  few  miles,  according  to  the  slope  of  the  land,  the 
range  of  the  tide  and  the  direction  of  the  wind.  It  has  one 
breadth  at  the  minimum  or  neap  tide,  but  increases  often 
two  or  three  fold  at  spring  tide,  when  the  distance  between 
ebb  and  flood  is  at  its  maximum.  At  the  mouth  of  Cook's 
Inlet  on  the  southern  Alaskan  coast,  where  the  range  of  tides 
is  only  eight  feet,  the  zone  is  comparatively  narrow,  but 
widens  rapidly  towards  the  head  of  the  inlet,  where  the  tide 
rises  twenty-three  feet  above  the  ebb  line,  and  even  to  sixty- 
five  feet  under  the  influence  of  a  heavy  southwest  storm.  On 
flat  coasts  we  are  familiar  with  the  wide  frontier  of  salt 
marshes,  that  witness  the  border  warfare  of  land  and  sea, 
alternate  invasion  and  retreat.  In  low-shored  estuaries  like 
those  of  northern  Brittany  and  northwestern  Alaska,  this 
amphibian  girdle  of  the  land  expands  to  a  width  of  four 
miles,  while  on  precipitous  coasts  of  tideless  sea  basins 
it  contracts  to  a  few  inches.  Hence  this  boundary  zone 
changes  with  every  impulse  of  the  mobile  sea  and  with  every 
varying  configuration  of  the  shore.  Movement  and  external 
conditions  are  the  factors  in  its  creation.  They  make  some- 
thing that  is  only  partially  akin  to  the  two  contiguous  forms. 
Here  on  their  outer  margins  land  and  ocean  compromise  their 
physical  differences,  and  this  by  a  law  which  runs  through 
animate  and  inanimate  nature.  Wherever  one  body  moves 
in  constant  contact  with  another,  it  is  subjected  to  modi- 
fying influences  which  differentiate  its  periphery  from  its  in- 
terior, lend  it  a  transitional  character,  make  of  it  a  penumbra 
between  light  and  shadow.  The  modifying  process  goes  on 
persistently  with  varying  force,  and  creates  a  shifting,  chang- 
ing border  zone  which,  from  its  nature,  cannot  be  delimited. 
For  convenience'  sake,  we  adopt  the  abstraction  of  a  bound- 
ary line;  but  the  reality  behind  this  abstraction  is  the  im- 
portant thing  in  anthropo-geography. 

All  so-called  boundary  lines  with  which  geography  has  to  Gradations 

do  have  this  same  character, — coastlines,  river  margins,  ice  . 

.  .  boundary 

or  snow  lines,  limits  of  vegetation,  boundaries  of  races  or 

religions  or  civilizations,  frontiers  of  states.  They  are  all 
the  same,  stamped  by  the  eternal  flux  of  nature.  Beyond  the 
solid  ice-pack  which  surrounds  the  North  Pole  is  a  wide 


206 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 


Oscillating 
boundaries 
of  the 

habitable 


girdle  of  almost  unbroken  drift  ice,  and  beyond  this  is  an 
irregular  concentric  zone  of  scattered  icebergs  which  varies 
in  breadth  with  season,  wind  and  local  current ;  a  persistent  de- 
crease in  continuity  from  solid  pack  to  open  sea.  The  line  of 
perpetual  snow  on  high  mountains  advances  or  retreats  from 
season  to  season,  from  year  to  year;  it  drops  low  on  chilly 
northern  slopes  and  recedes  to  higher  altitudes  on  a  southern 
exposure;  sends  down  long  icy  tongues  in  dark  gorges,  and 
leaves  outlying  patches  of  old  snow  in  shaded  spots  or  be- 
neath a  covering  of  rock  waste  far  below  the  margin  of  the 
snow  fields. 

In  the  struggle  for  existence  in  the  vegetable  world,  the 
tree  line  pushes  as  far  up  the  mountain  as  conditions  of 
climate  and  soil  will  permit.  Then  comes  a  season  of  fiercer 
storms,  intenser  cold  and  invading  ice  upon  the  peaks.  Havoc 
is  wrought,  and  the  forest  drops  back  across  a  zone  of  border 
warfare — for  war  belongs  to  borders — leaving  behind 
it  here  and  there  a  dwarfed  pine  or  gnarled  and  twisted 
juniper  which  has  survived  the  onslaught  of  the  enemy. 
Now  these  are  stragglers  in  the  retreat,  but  are  destined 
later  in  milder  years  to  serve  as  outposts  in  the  advance  of 
the  forest  to  recover  its  lost  ground.  Here  we  have  a  border 
scene  which  is  typical  in  nature — the  belt  of  unbroken  forest, 
growing  thinner  and  more  stunted  toward  its  upper  edge, 
succeeded  by  a  zone  of  scattered  trees,  which  may  form  a 
cluster  perhaps  in  some  sheltered  gulch  where  soil  has  col- 
lected and  north  winds  are  excluded,  and  higher  still  the 
whitened  skeleton  of  a  tree  to  show  how  far  the  forest  once 
invaded  the  domain  of  the  waste. 

The  habitable  area  of  the  earth  everywhere  shows  its  bound- 
aries to  be  peripheral  zones  of  varying  width,  now  occupied 
and  now  deserted,  protruding  or  receding  according  to  ex- 
ternal conditions  of  climate  and  soil,  and  subject  to  seasonal 
change.  The  distribution  of  human  life  becomes  sparser 
from  the  temperate  regions  toward  the  Arctic  Circle,  fore- 
shadowing the  unpeopled  wastes  of  the  ice-fields  beyond.  The 
outward  movement  from  the  Tropics  poleward  halts  where  life 
conditions  disappear,  and  there  finds  its  boundary ;  but  as  life 
conditions  advance  or  retreat  with  the  seasons,  so  does  that 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES  207 

boundary.  On  the  west  coast  of  Greenland  the  Eskimo  vil- 
lage of  Etah,  at  about  the  seventy-eighth  parallel,  marks  the 
northern  limit  of  permanent  or  winter  settlement ;  but  in  sum- 
mer the  Eskimo,  in  his  kayak,  follows  the  musk-ox  and  seal 
much  farther  north  and  there  leaves  his  igloo  to  testify  to 
the  wide  range  of  his  poleward  migration.  Numerous  relics 
of  the  Eskimo  and  their  summer  encampments  have  been 
found  along  Lady  Franklin  Bay  in  northern  Grinnell  Land 
(81°  50'  N.  L.),  but  in  the  interior,  on  the  outlet  streams 
of  Lake  Hazen,  explorers  have  discovered  remains  of  habita- 
tions which  had  evidently,  in  previous  ages,  been  perma- 
nently occupied.1  The  Murman  Coast  of  the  Kola  Peninsula 
has  in  summer  a  large  population  of  Russian  fishermen  and 
forty  or  more  fishing  stations :  but  when  the  catch  is  over  at 
the  end  of  August,  and  the  Arctic  winter  approaches,  the 
stations  are  closed,  and  the  three  thousand  fishermen  return 
to  their  permanent  homes  on  the  shores  of  the  White  Sea.1 
Farther  east  along  this  polar  fringe  of  Russia,  the  little  vil- 
lage of  Charbarova,  located  on  the  Jugor  Strait,  is  in- 
habited in  summer  by  a  number  of  Samoyedes,  who  pasture 
their  reindeer  over  on  Vaygats  Island,  and  by  some  Rus- 
sians and  Finns,  who  come  from  the  White  Sea  towns  to  trade 
with  the  Samoyedes  and  incidentally  to  hunt  and  fish.  But  in 
the  fall,  when  a  new  ice  bridge  across  the  Strait  releases  the 
reindeer  from  their  enclosed  pasture  on  the  island,  the  Samo- 
yedes withdraw  southward,  and  the  merchants  with  their 
wares  to  Archangel  and  other  points.  This  has  gone  on  for 
centuries.3  On  the  Briochov  Islands  at  the  head  of  the 
Yenisei  estuary  Nordenskiold  found  a  small  group  of  houses 
which  formed  a  summer  fishing  post  in  1875,  but  which  was 
deserted  by  the  end  of  August.4 

An  altitude  of  about  five  thousand  feet  marks  the  limit  of  Altitude 
village  life  in  the  Alps;  but  during  the  three  warm  months 
of  the  year,  the  summer  pastures  at  eight  thousand  feet  or 
more  are  alive  with  herds  and  their  keepers.  The  boundary 
line  of  human  life  moves  up  the  mountains  in  the  wake  of 
spring  and  later  hurries  down  again  before  the  advance  of 
winter.  The  Himalayan  and  Karakorum  ranges  show  whole 
villages  of  temporary  occupation,  like  the  summer  trading 


208 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 


"Wallace's 
Line"  a 
typical 
boundary 
zone. 


Boundaries 
as  limits 
of  move- 
ments or 
expansion. 


town  of  Gartok  at  15,000  feet  on  the  caravan  route  from 
Leh  to  Lhassa,  or  Shahidula  (3,285  meters  or  10,925  feet) 
on  the  road  between  Leh  and  Yarkand  ;s  but  the  boundary 
of  permanent  habitation  lies  several  thousand  feet  below. 
Comparable  to  these  are  the  big  hotels  that  serve  summer 
stage-coach  travel  over  the  Alps  and  Rockies,  but  which  are 
deserted  when  the  first  snow  closes  the  passes.  Here  a  zone 
of  altitude,  as  in  the  polar  regions  a  zone  of  latitude,  marks 
the  limits  of  the  habitable  area. 

The  distribution  of  animals  and  races  shows  the  limit  of 
their  movements  or  expansion.  Any  boundary  defining  the 
limits  of  such  movements  can  not  from  its  nature  be  fixed, 
and  hence  can  not  be  a  line.  It  is  always  a  zone.  Yet 
"Wallace's  Line,"  dividing  the  Oriental  from  the  Australian 
zoological  realm,  and  running  through  Macassar  Strait 
southward  between  Bali  and  Lombok,  is  a  generally  accepted 
dictum.  The  details  of  Wallace's  investigation,  however, 
reveal  the  fact  that  this  boundary  is  not  a  line,  but  a  zone 
of  considerable  and  variable  width,  enclosing  the  line  on  either 
side  with  a  marginal  belt  of  mixed  character.  Though 
Celebes,  lying  to  the  east  of  Macassar  Strait,  is  included  in 
the  Australian  realm,  it  has  lost  so  large  a  proportion  of 
Australian  types  of  animals,  and  contains  so  many  Oriental 
types  from  the  west,  that  Wallace  finds  it  almost  impossible 
to  decide  on  which  side  of  the  line  it  belongs.6  The  Oriental 
admixture  extends  yet  farther  east  over  the  Moluccas  and 
Timor.  Birds  of  Javan  or  Oriental  origin,  to  the  extent 
of  thirty  genera,  have  spread  eastward  well  across  Wallace's 
Line ;  some  of  these  stop  short  at  Flores,  and  some  reach  even 
to  Timor,1  while  Australian  cockatoos,  in  turn,  have  been  seen 
on  the  west  coast  of  Bali  but  not  in  Java.  Heilprin  avoids 
the  unscientific  term  line,  because  he  finds  his  zoological 
realms  divided  by  "transition  regions,"  which  are  inter- 
mediate in  animal  types  as  they  are  in  geographical  location.8 
Wallace  notes  a  similar  "debatable  land"  in  the  Rajputana 
Desert  east  of  the  Indus,  which  is  the  border  district  between 
the  Oriental  and  Ethiopian  realms  9 

Such  boundaries  mark  the  limits  of  that  movement  which  is 
common  to  all  animate  things.  Every  living  form  spreads 


ft    :: 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES  209 

until  it  meets  natural  conditions  in  which  it  can  no  longer 
survive,  or  until  it  is  checked  by  the  opposing  expansion 
of  some  competing  form.  If  there  is  a  change  either  in 
the  life  conditions  or  in  the  strength  of  the  competing  forms, 
the  boundary  shifts.  In  the  propitious  climate  of  the  Genial 
Period,  plants  and  animals  lived  nearer  to  the  North  Pole 
than  at  present;  then  they  fell  back  before  the  advance  of 
the  ice  sheet.  The  restless  surface  of  the  ocean  denies  to 
man  a  dwelling  place ;  every  century,  however,  the  Dutch  are 
pushing  forward  their  northern  boundary  by  reclamation 
of  land  from  the  sea ;  but  repeatedly  they  have  had  to  drop 
back  for  a  time  when  the  water  has  again  overwhelmed  their 
hand-made  territory. 

The  boundaries  of  race  and  state  which  are  subjected  to  Peoples 
greatest  fluctuations  are  those  determined  by  the  resistance  a8 
of  other  peoples.  The  westward  sweep  of  the  Slavs  prior  to  ! 
the  eighth  century  carried  them  beyond  the  Elbe  into  contact 
with  the  Germans ;  but  as  these  increased  in  numbers,  outgrew 
their  narrow  territories  and  inaugurated  a  counter-movement 
eastward,  the  Slavs  began  falling  back  to  the  Oder,  to  the 
Vistula,  and  finally  to  the  Niemen.  Though  the  Mohawk  Val- 
ley opened  an  easy  avenue  of  expansion  westward  for  the 
early  colonists  of  New  York,  the  advance  of  settlements  up 
this  valley  for  several  decades  went  on  at  only  a  snail's  pace, 
because  of  the  compact  body  of  Iroquois  tribes  holding  this 
territory.  In  the  unoccupied  land  farther  south  between 
the  Cumberland  and  Ohio  rivers  the  frontier  went  forward 
with  leaps  and  bounds,  pushed  on  by  the  expanding  power  of 
the  young  Republic.  [See  map  page  156.] 

Anything  which  increases  the  expanding  force  of  a  people 
—the  establishment  of  a  more  satisfactory  government  by 
which  the  national  consciousness  is  developed,  as  in  the  Amer- 
ican and  French  revolutions,  the  prosecution  of  a  successful 
war  by  which  popular  energies  are  released  from  an  old 
restraint,  mere  increase  of  population,  or  an  impulse  com- 
municated by  some  hostile  and  irresistible  force  behind — all 
are  registered  in  an  advance  of  the  boundary  of  the  people 
in  question  and  a  corresponding  retrusion  of  their  neighbor's 
frontier. 


210 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 


Boundary 
zone  as 
index  of 
growth  or 
decline. 


Breadth 
of  the 
boundary 
zone. 


The  border  district  is  the  periphery  of  the  growing  or 
declining  race  or  state.  It  runs  the  more  irregularly,  the 
greater  are  the  variations  in  the  external  conditions  as  rep- 
resented by  climate,  soil,  barriers,  and  natural  openings,  ac- 
cording as  these  facilitate  or  obstruct  advance.  When  it  is 
contiguous  with  the  border  of  another  state  or  race,  the  two 
form  a  zone  in  which  ascendency  from  one  side  or  the 
other  is  being  established.  The  boundary  fluctuates,  for 
equilibrium  of  the  contending  forces  is  established  rarely  and 
for  only  short  periods.  The  more  aggressive  people  throws 
out  across  this  debatable  zone,  along  the  lines  of  least  resis- 
tance or  greatest  attraction,  long  streamers  of  occupation ; 
so  that  the  frontier  takes  on  the  form  of  a  fringe  of  settle- 
ment, whose  interstices  are  occupied  by  a  corresponding 
fringe  of  the  displaced  people.  Such  was  its  aspect  in  early 
colonial  America,  where  population  spread  up  every  fertile 
river  valley  across  a  zone  of  Indian  land ;  and  such  it  is  in 
northern  Russia  to-day,  where  long  narrow  Slav  bands  run 
out  from  the  area  of  continuous  Slav  settlement  across  a  wide 
belt  of  Mongoloid  territory  to  the  shores  of  the  White  Sea 
and  Arctic  Ocean.10  [See  maps  pages  103  and  225.] 

The  border  zone  is  further  broadened  by  the  formation  of 
ethnic  islands  beyond  the  base  line  of  continuous  settlement, 
which  then  advances  more  or  less  rapidly,  if  expansion  is  un- 
checked, till  it  coalesces  with  these  outposts,  just  as  the 
forest  line  on  the  mountains  may  reach,  under  advantageous 
conditions,  its  farthest  outlying  tree.  Such  ethnic  peninsulas 
and  islands  we  see  in  the  early  western  frontiers  of  the  United 
States  from  1790  to  1840,  when  that  frontier  was  daily  mov- 
ing westward.11  [Sec  map  page  156.] 

The  breadth  of  the  frontier  zone  is  indicative  of  the  activ- 
ity of  growth  on  the  one  side  and  the  corresponding  decline 
on  the  other,  because  extensive  encroachment  in  the  same  de- 
gree disintegrates  the  territory  of  the  neighbor  at  whose  cost 
such  encroachment  is  made.  A  straight,  narrow  race  bound- 
ary, especially  if  it  is  nearly  coincident  with  a  political 
boundary,  points  to  an  equilibrium  of  forces  which  means,  for 
the  time  being  at  least,  a  cessation  of  growth.  Such  bound- 
aries are  found  in  old,  thickly  populated  countries,  while  the 


ro 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 

wide,  ragged  border  zone  belongs  to  new,  and  especially  to 
colonial  peoples.  In  the  oldest  and  most  densely  populated 
seats  of  the  Germans,  where  they  are  found  in  the  Rhine 
Valley,  the  boundaries  of  race  and  empire  are  straight  and 
simple;  but  the  younger,  eastern  border,  which  for  centuries 
has  been  steadily  advancing  at  the  cost  of  the  unequally 
matched  Slavs,  has  the  ragged  outline  and  sparse  population 
of  a  true  colonial  frontier.  Between  two  peoples  who  have 
had  a  long  period  of  growth  behind  them,  the  oscillations  of 
the  boundary  decrease  in  amplitude,  as  it  were,  and  finally 
approach  a  state  of  rest.  Each  people  tends  to  fill  out  its 
area  evenly  ;  every  advance  in  civilization,  every  increase  of 
population,  increases  the  stability  of  their  tenure,  and  hence 
the  equilibrium  of  the  pressure  upon  the  boundary.  There- 
fore, in  such  countries,  racial,  linguistic  and  cultural  bound- 
aries tend  to  become  simpler  and  straighter. 

The  growth  is  more  apparent,  or,  in  other  words,  the 
border  zone  is  widest  and  most  irregular,  where  a  superior 
people  intrudes  upon  the  'territory  of  an  inferior  race.  Such  ZQne  ^ 
was  the  broad  zone  of  thinly  scattered  farms  and  villages  active  ex- 
amid  a  prevailing  wilderness  and  hostile  Indian  tribes  pansion. 
which,  in  1810  and  1820,  surrounded  our  Trans-  Allegheny 
area  of  continuous  settlement  in  a  one  to  two  hundred  mile 
wide  girdle.  Such  has  been  the  wide,  mobile  frontier  of  the 
Russian  advance  in  Siberia  and  until  recently  in  Manchuria, 
which  aimed  to  include  within  a  dotted  line  of  widely  sep- 
arated railway-guard  stations,  Cossack  barracks,  and  penal 
colonies,  the  vast  territory  which  later  generations  were  fully 
to  occupy.  Similar,  too,  is  the  frontier  of  the  Dutch  and 
English  settlements  in  South  Africa,  which  has  been  pushed 
forward  into  the  Kaffir  country  —  a  broad  belt  of  scattered 
cattle  ranches  and  isolated  mining  hives,  dropped  down 
amid  Kaffir  hunting  and  grazing  lands.  Broader  still 
was  that  shadowy  belt  of  American  occupation  which  for 
four  decades  immediately  succeeding  the  purchase  of  Louisi- 
ana stretched  in  the  form  of  isolated  fur-stations,  lonely 
trappers'  camps,  and  shifting  traders'  rendezvous  from  the 
Mississippi  to  the  western  slope  of  the  Rockies  and  the 
northern  watershed  of  the  Missouri,  where  it  met  the  corre- 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 


Economic 
factors  in 
expanding 
frontiers. 


spending  nebulous  outskirts  of  the  far-away  Canadian  state 
on  the  St.  Lawrence  River. 

The  same  process  with  the  same  geographical  character  has 
been  going  on  in  the  Sahara,  as  the  French  since  1890  have 
been  expanding  southward  from  the  foot  of  the  Atlas  Moun- 
tains in  Algeria  toward  Timbuctoo  at  the  cost  of  the  nomad 
Tuaregs.  Territory  is  first  subdued  and  administered  by  the 
military  till  it  is  fully  pacified.  Then  it  is  handed  over  to  the 
civil  government.  Hence  the  advancing  frontier  consists  of 
a  military  zone  of  administration,  with  a  civil  zone  behind  it, 
and  a  weaker  wavering  zone  of  exploration  and  scout  work 
before  it.12  Lord  Curzon  in  his  Romanes  lecture  describes  the 
northwest  frontier  of  India  as  just  such  a  three-ply  border. 

The  untouched  resources  of  such  new  countries  tempt  to 
the  widespread  superficial  exploitation,  which  finds  its  geo- 
graphical expression  in  a  broad,  dilating  frontier.  Here 
the  man-dust  which  is  to  form  the  future  political  planet  is 
thinly  disseminated,  swept  outward  by  a  centrifugal  force. 
Furthermore,  the  absence  of  natural  barriers  which  might 
block  this  movement,  the  presence  of  open  plains  and  river 
highways  to  facilitate  it,  and  the  predominance  of  harsh  con- 
ditions of  climate  or  soil  rendering  necessary  a  savage,  ex- 
tensive exploitation  of  the  slender  resources,  often  combine 
still  further  to  widen  the  frontier  zone.  This  was  the  case 
in  French  Canada  and  till  recent  decades  in  Siberia,  where 
intense  cold  and  abundant  river  highways  stimulated  the  fur 
trade  to  the  practical  exclusion  of  all  other  activities,  and 
substituted  for  the  closely  grouped,  sedentary  farmers  with 
their  growing  families  the  wide-ranging  trader  with  his 
Indian  or  Tunguse  wife  and  his  half-breed  offspring.  Under 
harsh  climatic  conditions,  the  fur  trade  alone  afforded  those 
large  profits  which  every  infant  colony  must  command  in 
order  to  survive;  and  the  fur  trade  meant  a  wide  frontier 
zone  of  scattered  posts  amid  a  prevailing  wilderness.  The 
French  in  particular,  by  the  possession  of  the  St.  Lawrence 
and  Mississippi  rivers,  the  greatest  systems  in  America, 
were  lured  into  the  danger  of  excessive  expansion,  attenuated 
their  ethnic  element,  and  failed  to  raise  the  economic  status 
of  their  wide  border  district,  which  could  therefore  offer  only 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES  213 

slight  resistance  to  the  spread  of  solid  English  settlement.13 
Yet  more  recently,  the  chief  weakness  of  the  Russians  in 
Siberia  and  Manchuria — apart  from  the  corruption  of  the 
national  government — was  the  weakness  of  a  too  remote  and 
too  sparsely  populated  frontier,  and  of  a  people  whose  inner 
development  had  not  kept  pace  with  their  rate  of  expansion. 

Wasteful  exploitation  of  a  big  territory  is  easier  than  the  Value  of 
economical  development  of  a  small  district.  This  is  one  line  barrier 
of  least  resistance  which  civilized  man  as  well  as  savage  boundanes« 
instinctively  follows,  and  which  explains  the  tendency  to- 
ward excessive  expansion  characteristic  of  all  primitive  and 
nascent  peoples.  For  such  peoples  natural  barriers  which 
set  bounds  to  this  expansion  are  of  vastly  greater  impor- 
tance than  they  are  for  mature  or  fully  developed  peoples. 
The  reason  is  this :  the  boundary  is  only  the  expression  of 
the  outward  movement  or  growth,  which  is  nourished  from 
the  same  stock  of  race  energy  as  is  the  inner  development. 
Either  carried  to  an  excess  weakens  or  retards  the  other. 
If  population  begins  to  press  upon  the  limits  of  subsistence, 
the  acquisition  of  a  new  bit  of  territory  obviates  the  necessity 
of  applying  more  work  and  more  intelligence  to  the  old  area, 
to  make  it  yield  subsistence  for  the  growing  number  of 
mouths ;  the  stimulus  to  adopt  better  economic  methods  is 
lost.  Therefore,  natural  boundaries  drawn  by  mountain, 
sea  and  desert,  serving  as  barriers  to  the  easy  appropria- 
tion of  new  territory,  have  for  such  peoples  a  far  deeper 
significance  than  the  mere  determination  of  their  political 
frontiers  by  physical  features,  or  the  benefit  of  protection. 

The  land  with  the  most  effective  geographical  boundaries 
is  a  naturally  defined  region  like  Korea,  Japan,  China, 
Egypt,  Italy,  Spain,  France  or  Great  Britain — a  land  char- 
acterized not  only  by  exclusion  from  without  through  its 
encircling  barriers,  but  also  by  the  inclusion  within  itself  of 
a  certain  compact  group  of  geographic  conditions,  to  whose 
combined  influences  the  inhabitants  are  subjected  and  from 
which  they  cannot  readily  escape.  This  aspect  is  far  more 
important  than  the  mere  protection  which  such  boundaries 
afford.  They  are  not  absolutely  necessary  for  the  develop- 
ment of  a  people,  but  they  give  it  an  early  start,  accelerate 


214  GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 

the  process,  and  bring  the  people  to  an  early  maturity ;  they 
stimulate  the  exploitation  of  all  the  local  geographic  advan- 
tages and  resources,  the  formation  of  a  vivid  tribal  or  na- 
tional consciousness  and  purpose,  and  concentrate  the 
national  energies  when  the  people  is  ready  to  overleap  the  old 
barriers.  The  early  development  of  island  and  peninsula 
peoples  and  their  attainment  of  a  finished  ethnic  and  political 
character  are  commonplaces  of  history.  The  stories  of 
Egypt,  Crete  and  Greece,  of  Great  Britain  and  Japan,  illus- 
trate the  stimulus  to  maturity  which  emanates  from  such 
confining  boundaries.  The  wall  of  the  Appalachians  nar- 
rowed the  westward  horizon  of  the  early  English  colonies  in 
America,  guarded  them  against  the  excessive  expansion  which 
was  undermining  the  French  dominion  in  the  interior  of  the 
continent,  set  a  most  wholesome  limit  to  their  aims,  and 
thereby  intensified  their  utilization  of  the  narrow  land  between 
mountains  and  sea.  France,  with  its  limits  of  growth  indi- 
cated by  the  Mediterranean,  Pyrenees,  Atlantic,  Channel, 
Vosges,  Jura  and  Western  Alps,  found  its  period  of  adoles- 
cence shortened  and,  like  Great  Britain,  early  reached  its 
maturity.  Nature  itself  set  the  goal  of  its  territorial  expan- 
sion, and  by  crystallizing  the  political  ideal  of  the  people, 
made  that  goal  easier  to  reach,  just  as  the  dream  of  "United 
Italy"  realized  in  1870  had  boon  prefigured  in  contours 
drawn  by  Alpine  range  and  Mediterranean  shore-line. 
The  sea  The  area  which  a  race  or  people  occupies  is  the  resultant 

as  the  of  the  expansive  force  within  and  the  obstacles  without,  either 

10  "e  physical  or  human.  Insurmountable  physical  obstacles  are 
met  where  all  life  conditions  disappear,  as  on  the  borders  of 
the  habitable  world,  where  man  is  barred  from  the  unpeopled 
wastes  of  polar  ice-fields  and  unsustaining  oceans.  The 
frozen  rim  of  arctic  lands,  the  coastline  of  the  continents,  the 
outermost  arable  strip  on  the  confines  of  the  desert,  the  bar- 
ren or  ice-capped  ridge  of  high  mountain  range,  are  all  such 
natural  boundaries  which  set  more  or  less  effective  limits  to 
the  movement  of  peoples  and  the  territorial  growth  of  states. 
The  sea  is  the  only  absolute  boundary,  because  it  alone 
blocks  the  continuous,  unbroken  expansion  of  a  people. 
When  the  Saxons  of  the  lower  Elbe  spread  to  the  island  of 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES      215 

Britain,  a  zone  of  unpeopled  sea  separated  their  new  settle- 
ments from  their  native  villages  on  the  mainland.  Even  the 
most  pronounced  land  barriers,  like  the  Himalayas  and 
Hindu  Kush,  have  their  passways  and  favored  spots  for  short 
summer  habitation,  where  the  people  from  the  opposite  slopes 
meet  and  mingle  for  a  season.  Sandy  wastes  are  hospitable 
at  times.  When  the  spring  rains  on  the  mountains  of  Abys- 
sinia start  a  wave  of  moisture  lapping  over  the  edges  of  the 
Nubian  desert,  it  is  immediately  followed  by  a  tide  of  Arabs 
with  their  camels  and  herds,  who  make  a  wide  zone  of  tem- 
porary occupation  spread  over  the  newly  created  grassland, 
but  who  retire  in  a  few  weeks  before  the  desiccating  heat  of 
summer.14 

Nevertheless,  all  natural  features  of  the   earth's  surface  Natural 
which   serve   to   check,   retard   or   weaken   the  expansion   of  boundanes 
peoples,    and   therefore    hold    them    apart,    tend   to    become    ^  ethnic 
racial  or  political  boundaries ;  and  all  present   a  zone-like  g^^  political 
character.     The  wide  ice-field  of  the  Scandinavian  Alps  was  boundaries 
an  unpeopled  waste  long  before  the  political  boundary  was 
drawn  along  it.     "It  has  not  in  reality  been  a  definite  natural 
line  that  has  divided  Norway  from  her  neighbour  on  the  east ; 
it  has  been  a  band  of  desert  land,  up  to  hundreds  of  miles  in 
width.     So  utterly  desolate  and  apart  from  the  area  of  con- 
tinuous habitation  has  this  been,  that  the  greater  part  of  it, 
the  district  north  of  Trondhjem,  was  looked  upon  even  as 
recently   as  the  last  century   as   a   common   district.      Only 
nomadic  Lapps  wandered  about  in  it,  sometimes  taxed  by  all 
three  countries.     A  parcelling  out  of  this  desert  common  dis- 
trict was  not  made  toward  Russia  until  1826.     Toward  Swe- 
den it  was  made  in  1751. J}1      In  former  centuries  the  Bour- 
tanger  Moor  west  of  the  River  Ems  used  to  be  a  natural 
desert    borderland    separating    East    and    West    Friesland, 
despite  the  similarity  of  race,  speech  and  country  on  either 
side  of  it.      It  undoubtedly  contributed  to   the   division   of 
Germany  and  the  Netherlands  along  the  present  frontier  line, 
which  has  been  drawn  the  length  of  this  moor  for  a  hundred 
kilometers.16  Primitive 

Any  geographical  feature  which,  like  this,  presents  a  prac-  waste 
tically  uninhabitable  area,  forms  a  scientific  boundary,  not  boundaries. 


816  GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 

only  because  it  holds  apart  the  two  neighboring  peoples  and 
thereby  reduces  the  contact  and  friction  which  might  be 
provocative  of  hostilities,  but  also  because  it  lends  protection 
against  attack.  This  motive,  as  also  the  zone  character  of 
all  boundaries,  comes  out  conspicuously  in  the  artificial  bor- 
der wastes  surrounding  primitive  tribes  and  states  in  the 
lower  status  of  civilization.  The  early  German  tribes  de- 
populated their  borders  in  a  wide  girdle,  and  in  this  wilder- 
ness permitted  no  neighbors  to  reside.  The  width  of  this 
zone  indicated  the  valor  and  glory  of  the  state,  but  was  also 
valued  as  a  means  of  protection  against  unexpected  attack.1' 
Cffisar  learned  that  between  the  Suevi  and  Cherusci  tribes  dwell- 
ing near  the  Rhine  "silvam  essc  ibi,  infinita  magnitudine  quae 
appelletur  Baeenis;  hanc  longe  introrsus  pertinere  et  pro 
nativo  muro  object  am  Cheruscos  ab  Siieris  Suerosque  ab 
Cheruscis  injuriis  incur  sionibusque  prohiberc"1  The  same 
device  appears  among  the  Huns.  When  Attila  was  pressing 
upon  the  frontier  of  the  Eastern  Empire  in  448  A.  D.,  his 
envoys  sent  to  Constantinople  demanded  that  the  Romans 
should  not  cultivate  a  belt  of  territory,  a  hundred  miles  wide 
and  three  hundred  miles  long,  south  of  the  Danube,  but  main- 
tain this  as  a  March.19  When  King  Alfonso  I.  (751-764 
A.  D.)  of  mountain  Asturias  began  the  reconquest  of  Spain 
from  the  Saracens,  he  adopted  the  same  method  of  holding 
the  foe  at  arm's  length.  He  seized  Old  Castile  as  far  as  the 
River  Duoro,  but  the  rest  of  the  province  south  of  that  stream 
he  converted  into  a  waste  boundary  by  transporting  the 
Christians  thence  to  the  north  side,  and  driving  the  Mo- 
hammedans yet  farther  southward.20  Similarly  Xenophon 
found  that  the  Armenian  side  of  the  River  Kentrites,  which 
formed  the  boundary  between  the  Armenian  plains  and  the 
highlands  of  Karduchia,  was  unpeopled  and  destitute  of  vil- 
lages for  a  breadth  of  fifteen  miles,  from  fear  of  the  maraud- 
ing Kurds.21  In  the  eastern  Sudan,  especially  in  that  wide 
territory  along  the  Nile-Congo  watershed  occupied  by  the 
Zandeh,  Junker  found  the  frontier  wilderness  a  regular  in- 
stitution owing  to  the  exposure  of  the  border  districts  in 
the  perennial  intertribal  feuds.22  The  same  testimony  comes 
from  Earth,23  Boyd  Alexander,24  Speke,25  and  other  explorers 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 

in  the  Sudan  and  the  neighboring  parts  of  equatorial  Africa. 

The  vast  and  fertile  region  defined  by  the  Ohio  and  Ten-  Border 
nessee  rivers,  lay  as  a  debatable  border  between  the  Algonquin  wastes  ° 
Indians  of  the  north  and  the  Appalachians  of  the  south. 
Both  claimed  it,  both  used  it  for  hunting,  but  neither  dared 
dwell  therein.26  Similarly  the  Cherokees  had  no  definite 
understanding  with  their  savage  neighbors  as  to  the  limits 
of  their  respective  territories  The  effectiveness  of  their  claim 
to  any  particular  tract  of  country  usually  diminished  with 
every  increase  of  its  distance  from  their  villages.  The  con- 
sequence was  that  a  considerable  strip  of  territory  between 
the  settlements  of  two  tribes,  Cherokees  and  Creeks  for  in- 
stance, though  claimed  by  both,  was  practically  considered 
neutral  ground  and  the  common  hunting  ground  of  both.27 
The  Creeks,  whose  most  western  villages  from  1771  to  1798 
were  located  along  the  Coosa  and  upper  Alabama  rivers,28 
were  separated  by  300  miles  of  wilderness  from  the  Chicka- 
saws  to  the  northwest,  and  by  a  150-mile  zone  from  the 
Choctaws.  The  most  northern  Choctaw  towns,  in  turn,  lay 
160  miles  to  the  south  of  the  Chickasaw  nation,  whose  com- 
pact settlements  were  located  on  the  watershed  between  the 
western  sources  of  the  Tombigby  and  the  head  stream  of  the 
Yazoo.29  The  wide  intervening  zone  of  forest  and  canebrake 
was  hunted  upon  by  both  nations.30 

Sometimes  the  border  is  preserved  as  a  wilderness  by  for- 
mal agreement.  A  classic  example  of  this  case  is  found 
in  the  belt  of  untenanted  land,  fifty  to  ninety  kilometers  wide, 
which  China  and  Korea  once  maintained  as  their  boundary. 
No  settler  from  either  side  was  allowed  to  enter,  and  all 
travel  across  the  border  had  to  use  a  single  passway,  where 
three  times  annually  a  market  was  held.31  On  the  Russo- 
Mongolian  border  south  of  Lake  Baikal,  the  town  of  Kiakhta, 
which  was  established  in  1688  as  an  entrepot  of  trade  between 
the  two  countries,  is  occupied  in  its  northern  half  by  Russian 
factories  and  in  its  southern  by  the  Mongolian-Chinese  quar- 
ters, while  between  the  two  is  a  neutral  space  devoted  to  com- 

3,  Alien  in- 

merce. 

trusions 

These  border  wastes  do  not  always  remain  empty,  however,  -mto 
even  when  their  integrity  is  respected  by  the  two  neighbors  wastes. 


218 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 


Politico- 
economic 
significance 
of  the 
waste 
boundary. 


whom  they  serve  to  divide ;  alien  races  often  intrude  in- 
to their  unoccupied  reaches.  The  boundary  wilderness 
between  the  Sudanese  states  of  Wadai  and  Dar  Fur  harbors 
several  semi-independent  states  whose  insignificance  is  a  guar- 
antee of  their  safety  from  conquest.33  Similarly  in  the  wide 
border  district  between  the  Creeks  on  the  east  and  the  Choc- 
taws  on  the  west  were  found  typical  small,  detached  tribes — 
the  Chatots  and  Thomez  of  forty  huts  each  on  the  Mobile 
River,  the  Tensas  tribe  with  a  hundred  huts  on  the  Tensas 
River,  and  the  Mobilians  near  the  confluence  of  the  Tom- 
bigby  and  Alabama.34  Along  the  desolate  highland  sepa- 
rating Norway  and  Sweden  the  nomadic  Lapps,  with  their 
reindeer  herds,  have  penetrated  southward  to  62°  North 
Latitude,  reinforcing  the  natural  barrier  by  another  barrier 
of  alien  race.  From  this  point  southward,  the  coniferous 
forests  begin  and  continue  the  border  waste  in  the  form  of  a 
zone  some  sixty  miles  wide;  this  was  unoccupied  till  about 
1600,  when  into  it  slowly  filtered  an  immigration  of  Finns, 
whose  descendants  to-day  constitute  an  important  part  of 
the  still  thin  population  along  the  frontier  to  the  heights  back 
of  Christiania.  Only  thirty  miles  from*  the  coast  does  the 
border  zone  between  Norway  and  Sweden,  peopled  chiefly 
by  intruding  foreign  stocks,  Lapps  and  Finns,  contract  and 
finally  merge  into  the  denser  Scandinavian  settlements.35 

Where  the  border  waste  offers  favorable  conditions  of  life 
and  the  intruding  race  has  reached  a  higher  status  of  civili- 
zation, it  multiplies  in  this  unpeopled  tract  and  soon  spreads 
at  the  cost  of  its  less  advanced  neighbors.  The  old  No  Man's 
Land  between  the  Ohio  and  Tennessee  was  a  line  of  least 
resistance  for  the  expanding  Colonies,  who  here  poured  in  a 
tide  of  settlement  between  the  northern  and  southern  Indians, 
just  as  later  other  pioneers  filtered  into  the  vague  border 
territory  of  weak  tenure  between  the  Choctaws  and  Creeks, 
and  there  on  the  Tombigby,  Mobile  and  Tensas  rivers, 
formed  the  nucleus  of  the  State  of  Alabama.36 

This  untenanted  hem  of  territory  surrounding  so  many 
savage  and  barbarous  peoples  reflects  their  superficial  and 
unsystematic  utilization  of  their  soil,  by  reason  of  which  the 
importance  of  the  land  itself  and  the  proportion  of  popula- 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES  219 

tion  to  area  are  greatly  reduced.  It  is  a  part  of  that  un- 
economic and  extravagant  use  of  the  land,  that  appropria- 
tion of  wide  territories  by  small  tribal  groups,  which  charac- 
terizes the  lower  stages  of  civilization,  as  opposed  to  the 
exploitation  of  every  square  foot  for  the  support  of  a  teem- 
ing humanity,  which  marks  the  most  advanced  states.  Each 
stage  puts  its  own  valuation  upon  the  land  according  to  the 
return  from  it  which  each  expects  to  get.  The  low  valuation 
is  expressed  in  the  border  wilderness,  by  which  a  third  or  even 
a  half  of  the  whole  area  is  wasted;  and  also  in  the  readiness 
with  which  savages  often  sell  their  best  territory  for  a  song. 

For  the  same  reason  they  leave  their  boundaries  undefined ; 
a  mile  nearer  or  farther,  what  does  it  matter?  Moreover, 
their  fitful  or  nomadic  occupation  of  the  land  leads  to  oscil- 
lations of  the  frontiers  with  every  attack  from  without  and 
every  variation  of  the  tribal  strength  within.  Their  unstable 
states  rarely  last  long  enough  in  a  given  form  or  size  to 
develop  fixed  boundaries ;  hence,  the  vagueness  as  to  the 
extent  of  tribal  domains  among  all  savage  peoples,  and  the 
conflicting  land  claims  which  are  the  abiding  source  of  war. 
Owing  to  these  overlapping  boundaries — border  districts 
claimed  but  not  occupied — the  American  colonists  met  with 
difficulties  in  their  purchase  of  land  from  the  Indians,  often 
paying  twice  for  the  same  strip. 

Even  civilized  peoples  may  adopt  a  waste  boundary  where  Common 
the  motive  for  protection  is  peculiarly  strong,  as  in  the  half-  boundary 
mile  neutral  zone  of  lowland  which  ties  the  rock  of  Gibraltar 
to  Spain.  On  a  sparsely  populated  frontier,  where  the 
abundance  of  land  reduces  its  value,  they  may  throw  the 
boundary  into  the  form  of  a  common  district,  as  in  the  vast, 
disputed  Oregon  country,  accepted  provisionally  as  a  dis- 
trict of  joint  occupancy  between  the  United  States  and 
Canada  from  1818  to  1846,  or  that  wide  highland  border 
which  Norway  so  long  shared  with  Russia  and  Sweden.  In 
South  America,  where  land  is  abundant  and  population 
sparse,  this  common  boundary  belt  is  not  rare.  It  suggests 
a  device  giving  that  leeway  for  expansion  desired  by  all 
growing  states.  By  the  treaty  of  1866,  the  frontier  between 
Chile  and  Bolivia  crossed  the  Atacama  desert  at  24° 


220  GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 

South  Latitude;  but  the  zone  between  23°  and  25°  was 
left  under  the  common  jurisdiction  of  the  two  states,  for  ex- 
ploitation of  the  guano  deposits  and  mineral  wealth.37  A 
common  border  district  on  a  much  larger  scale  is  found 
between  Brazil  and  the  eastern  frontier  of  French  Guiana. 
It  includes  a  belt  185  miles  (300  kilometers)  wide  between 
the  Oyapok  and  Arawary  rivers,  and  is  left  as  a  neutral 
district  till  its  fate  is  decided  by  arbitration.38  All  these 
instances  are  only  temporary  phases  in  the  evolution  of  a 
political  frontier  from  wide,  neutral  border  to  the  mathe- 
matically determined  boundary  line  required  by  modern  civ- 
ilized states. 

Tariff  free  Even  when  the  boundary  line  has  been  surveyed  and  the 

zones.  boundary  pillars  set  up,  the  frontier  is  prone  to  assert  its  old 

zonal  nature,  simply  because  it  marks  the  limits  of  human 
movements.  Rarely,  for  instance,  does  a  customs  boundary 
coincide  with  a  political  frontier,  even  in  the  most  advanced 
states  of  Europe,  except  on  the  coasts.  The  student  of 
Baedecker  finds  a  gap  of  several  miles  on  the  same  railroad 
between  the  customs  frontier  of  Germany  and  France,  or 
France  and  Italy.  Where  the  border  district  is  formed  by 
a  high  and  rugged  mountain  range,  the  custom  houses  re- 
cede farther  and  farther  from  the  common  political  line  upon 
the  ridge,  and  drop  down  the  slope  to  convenient  points, 
leaving  between  them  a  wide  neutral  tariff  zone,  like  that  in 
Haute  Savoie  along  the  massive  Mont  Blanc  Range  between 
France  and  Italy. 

Allied  to  this  phase,  yet  differing  from  it,  is  the  "Zona 
Libre"  or  Free  Zone,  12  miles  broad  and  1,833  miles 
long,  which  forms  the  northern  hem  of  Mexico  from  the  Gulf 
to  the  Pacific.  Here  foreign  goods  pay  only  18  1-2  per  cent., 
formerly  only  2  1-2  per  cent.,  of  the  usual  federal  duties. 
Goods  going  on  into  the  interior  pay  the  rest  of  the  tariff 
at  the  inner  margin  of  the  Zone.  This  arrangement  was 
adopted  in  1858  to  establish  some  sort  of  commercial  equilib- 
rium between  the  Mexican  towns  of  the  Rio  Grande  Valley, 
which  were  burdened  by  excessive  taxation  on  internal  trade, 
and  the  Texas  towns  across  the  river,  which  at  this  time  en- 
joyed a  specially  low  tariff.  Consequently  prices  of  food  and 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES  221 

manufactured  goods  were  twice  or  four  times  as  high  on  the 
Mexican  as  on  the  American  side.  The  result  was  persistent 
smuggling,  extensive  emigration  from  the  southern  to  the 
northern  bank,  and  the  commercial  decline  of  the  frontier 
states  of  Mexico,  till  the  Zona  Libre  adjusted  the  commercial 
discrepancy.39  Since  1816  a  tariff  free  zone  a  league  wide 
has  formed  the  border  of  French  Savoy  along  the  Canton 
and  Lake  of  Geneva,  thus  uniting  this  canton  by  a  free  pass- 
way  with  the  Swiss  territory  at  the  upper  end  of  the  lake.40 

When  the  political  boundary  has  evolved  by  a  system  of  Boundary 
contraction  out  of  the  wide  waste  zone  to  the  nicely  deter-  zones  °f 

mined  line,  that  line,  nevertheless,  is  always  encased,  as  it  n 

•*  race  ele- 

were,  in  a  zone  of  contact  wherein  are  mingled  the  elements  of  ments. 

either  side.  The  zone  includes  the  peripheries  of  the  two  con- 
tiguous racial  or  national  bodies,  and  in  it  each  is  modified 
and  assimilated  to  the  other.  On  its  edges  it  is  strongly 
marked  by  the  characteristics  of  the  adjacent  sides,  but  its 
medial  band  shows  a  mingling  of  the  two  in  ever-varying  pro- 
portions ;  it  changes  from  day  to  day  and  shifts  backward 
and  forward,  according  as  one  side  or  the  other  exercises  in 
it  more  potent  economic,  religious,  racial,  or  political  influ- 
ences. 

Its  peripheral  character  comes  out  strongly  in  the  mingling 
of  contiguous  ethnic  elements  found  in  every  frontier  dis- 
trict. Here  is  that  zone  of  transitional  form  which  we  have 
seen  prevails  so  widely  in  nature.  The  northern  borderland 
of  the  United  States  is  in  no  small  degree  Canadian,  and  the 
southern  is  strongly  Mexican.  In  the  Rio  Grande  counties  of 
Texas,  Mexicans  constituted  in  1890  from  27  to  55  per  cent, 
of  the  total  population,  and  they  were  distributed  in  con- 
siderable numbers  also  in  the  second  tier  of  counties.  A  broad 
band  of  French  and  English  Canadians  overlaps  the  northern 
hem  of  United  States  territory  from  Maine  to  North 
Dakota.41  In  the  New  York  and  New  England  counties  bor- 
dering on  the  old  French  province  of  Quebec,  they  constitute 
from  11  to  22  per  cent,  of  the  total  population,  except  in 
two  or  three  western  counties  of  Maine  which  have  evidently 
been  mere  passways  for  a  tide  of  habitants  moving  on  to 
more  attractive  conditions  of  life  in  the  counties  just  to  the 


Ethnic 
border 
zones  in 
the  Alps. 


The  Slav- 
German 
boundary. 


south.42  But  even  these  large  figures  do  not  adequately 
represent  the  British-American  element  within  our  bound- 
aries, because  they  leave  out  of  account  the  native-born  of 
Canadian  parents  who  have  been  crossing  our  borders  for 
over  a  generation. 

If  we  turn  to  northern  Italy,  where  a  mountain  barrier 
might  have  been  expected  to  segregate  the  long-headed 
Mediterranean  stock  from  the  broad-headed  Alpine  stock, 
we  find  as  a  matter  of  fact  that  the  ethnic  type  throughout 
the  Po  basin  is  markedly  brachycephalic  and  becomes  more 
pronounced  along  the  northern  boundary  in  the  Alps,  till  it 
culminates  in  Piedmont  along  the  frontier  of  France,  where 
it  becomes  identical  with  the  broad-headed  Savoyards.43 
More  than  this,  Proven9al  French  is  spoken  in  the  Dora  Bal- 
tea  Valley  of  Piedmont;  and  along  the  upper  Dora  Riparia 
and  in  the  neighboring  valleys  of  the  Chisone  and  Pellice  are 
the  villages  of  the  refugee  Waldenses,  who  speak  an  idiom 
allied  to  the  Provei^al.  More  than  this,  the  whole  Pied- 
montese  Italian  is  characterized  by  its  approach  to  the 
French,  and  the  idiom  of  Turin  sounds  very  much  like  Pro- 
ven9al.44  To  the  north  there  is  a  similar  exchange  between 
Italy  and  Switzerland  with  the  adjacent  Austrian  province 
of  the  Tyrol.  In  the  rugged  highlands  of  the  Swiss  Grisons 
bordering  upon  Italy,  we  find  a  pure  Alpine  stock,  known  to 
the  ancients  as  the  Rhaetians,  speaking  a  degenerate  Latin 
tongue  called  Romansch,  which  still  persists  also  under  the 
names  of  Ladino  and  Frioulian  in  the  Alpine  regions  of  the 
Tyrol  and  Italy.  In  fact,  the  map  of  linguistic  bound- 
aries in  the  Grisons  shows  the  dovetailing  of  German,  Italian, 
and  Romansch  in  a  broad  zone.45  The  traveller  in  the  south- 
ern Tyrol  becomes  accustomed  in  the  natives  to  the  combina- 
tion of  Italian  coloring,  German  speech,  and  Alpine  head 
form ;  whereas,  if  on  reaching  Italy  he  visits  the  hills  back  of 
Vicenza,  he  finds  the  German  settlements  of  Tredici  and  Sette 
Communi,  where  German  customs,  folklore,  language,  and 
German  types  of  faces  still  persist,  survivals  from  the  days 
of  German  infiltration  across  the  Brenner  Pass.48 

Where  Slavs  and  Teutons  come  together  in  Central  Eu- 
rope, their  race  border  is  a  zone  lying  approximately  between 
14  and  24  degrees  East  Longitude;  it  is  crossed  by  alternate 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 


223 


7—  7J  Letto  Lithuanians 
Germans 


|O0 

00 


SLAV-GERMAN  BOUNDARY  IN  EUROPE. 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 


Assimila- 
tion of 
culture  in 
boundary 
zones. 


peninsulas  of  predominant  Germans  and  Austrians  from  the 
one  side,  Czechs  and  Poles  from  the  other,  the  whole  spattered 
over  by  a  sprinkling  of  the  two  elements.  Rarely*  and  then 
only  for  short  stretches,  do  political  and  ethnic  boundaries 
coincide.  The  northern  frontier  hem  of  East  Prussia  lying 
between  the  River  Niemen  and  the  political  line  of  demarca- 
tion is  quite  as  much  Lithuanian  as  German,  while  German 
stock  dots  the  whole  surface  of  the  Baltic  provinces  of  Russia 
as  far  as  St.  Petersburg.  The  eastern  rim  of  the  Kaiser's 
empire  as  far  south  as  the  Carpathians  presents  a  broad 
band  of  the  Polish  race,  averaging  about  fifty  kilometers 
(30  miles)  in  width,  sparsely  sprinkled  with  German  settle- 
ments; these  are  found  farther  east  also  as  an  ethnic  archi- 
pelago dotting  the  wide  Slav  area  of  Poland.  The  enclosed 
basin  of  Bohemia,  protected  on  three  sides  by  mountain  walls 
and  readily  accessible  to  the  Slav  stock  at  the  sources  of 
the  Vistula,  enabled  the  Czechs  to  penetrate  far  westward 
and  there  maintain  themselves ;  but  in  spite  of  encompassing 
mountains,  the  inner  or  Bohemian  slopes  of  the  Boehmer 
Wald,  Erz,  and  Sudetes  ranges  constitute  a  broad  girdle  of 
almost  solid  German  population.47  In  the  Austrian  provinces 
of  Moravia  and  Silesia,  which  form  the  southeastward  con- 
tinuation of  this  Slav-German  boundary  zone,  60  per  cent, 
of  the  population  are  Czechs,  33  per  cent,  are  German,  and 
7  per  cent.,  found  in  the  eastern  part  of  Silesia,  are  Poles.49 

An  ethnic  map  of  the  western  Muscovite  Empire  in  Europe 
shows  a  marked  infiltration  into  White  and  Little  Russia  of 
West  Slavs  from  Poland,  and  in  the  province  of  Bessarabia 
alternate  areas  of  Russians  and  Roumanians.  The  latter 
in  places  form  an  unbroken  ethnic  expansion  from  the  hom«j 
kingdom  west  of  the  Pruth,  extending  in  solid  bands  as  far 
as  the  Dniester,  and  throwing  out  ethnic  islands  between  this 
stream  and  the  Bug. 

In  the  northern  provinces  of  Russia,  in  the  broad  zone 
shared  by  the  aboriginal  Finns  and  the  later-coming  Slavs, 
Wallace  found  villages  in  every  stage  of  Russification.  "In 
one  everything  seemed  thoroughly  Finnish ;  the  inhabitants 
had  a  reddish-olive  skin,  very  high  cheek  bones,  obliquely  set 
eyes,  and  a  peculiar  costume ;  none  of  the  women  and  very 
few  of  the  men  could  understand  Russian  and  any  Russian 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 


225 


Poles 
Swedes 


Magyars 
Russian 
German 
ETHNOGRAPHICAL  MAP  OF  EUSSIA. 

MONGOLOID:  Kalmucks,  Kirgrhis,  Nograi,  Tartars,  Bashkirs,  Voguls,  Os- 
tiaks,   Samoyedes. 

ZIEIAX:    Mingled  Mongoloid   and   Finnish. 


226 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 


Boundary 
zones  of 

assimilation 
in  Asia 


who  visited  the  place  was  regarded  as  a  foreigner.  In  the 
second,  there  were  already  some  Russian  inhabitants ;  the 
others  had  lost  something  of  their  purely  Finnish  type,  many 
of  the  men  had  discarded  the  old  costume  and  spoke  Russian 
fluently,  and  a  Russian  visitor  was  no  longer  shunned.  In  a 
third,  the  Finnish  type  was  still  further  weakened;  all  the 
men  spoke  Russian,  and  nearly  all  the  women  understood  it ; 
the  old  male  costume  had  entirely  disappeared  and  the  old 
female  was  rapidly  following  it ;  and  intermarriage  with  the 
Russian  population  was  no  longer  rare.  In  a  fourth,  inter- 
marriage had  almost  completely  done  its  work,  and  the  old 
Finnish  element  could  be  detected  merely  in  certain  peculiar- 
ities of  physiognomy  and  accent."  This  amalgamation  ex- 
tends to  their  religions — prayers  wholly  pagan  devoutly 
uttered  under  the  shadow  of  a  strange  cross,  next  the  Finn- 
ish god  Yumak  sharing  honors  equally  with  the  Virgin,  finally 
a  Christianity  pure  in  doctrine  and  outward  forms  except  for 
the  survival  of  old  pagan  ceremonies  in  connection  with  the 
dead.49 

At  the  confluence  of  the  Volga  and  Kama  rivers,  this 
boundary  zone  of  Russians  and  Finns  meets  the  borderland 
of  the  Asiatic  Mongols ;  and  here  is  found  an  intermingling 
of  races,  languages,  religions,  and  customs  scarcely  to  be 
equalled  elsewhere.  Finns  are  infused  with  Tartar  as  well 
as  Russian  blood,  and  Russians  show  Tartar  as  well  as  Finn- 
ish traits.  The  Bashkirs,  who  constitute  an  ethnic  peninsula 
running  from  the  solid  Mongolian  mass  of  Asia,  show  every 
type  of  the  mongrel.50  [See  map  page  225.] 

If  we  turn  to  Asia  and  examine  the  western  race  boundary 
of  the  expanding  Chinese,  we  find  that  a  wide  belt  of  mingled 
ethnic  elements,  hybrid  languages,  and  antagonistic  civiliza- 
tions marks  the  transition  from  Chinese  to  Mongolian  and 
Tibetan  areas.  The  eastern  and  southern  frontiers  of  Mon- 
golia, formerly  marked  by  the  Great  Wall,  are  now  difficult 
to  define,  owing  to  the  steady  encroachment  of  the  agricul- 
tural Chinese  on  the  fertile  edges  of  the  plateau,  where  they 
have  converted  the  best-watered  pastures  of  the  Mongols 
into  millet  fields  and  vegetable  gardens,  leaving  for  the  no- 
mad's herds  the  more  sterile  patches  between.51  Every  line 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES  227 

of  least  resistance — climatic,  industrial,  commercial — sees  the 
Chinese  widening  this  transitional  zone.  He  sprinkles  his 
crops  over  the  "Land  of  Grass,"  invades  the  trade  of  the 
caravan  towns,  sets  up  his  fishing  station  on  the  great  north- 
ern bend  of  the  Hoangho  in  the  Ordos  country,  three  hun- 
dred miles  beyond  the  Wall,  to  exploit  the  fishing  neglected 
by  the  Mongols.52  The  well-watered  regions  of  the  Nan-Shan 
ranges  has  enabled  him  to  drive  a  long,  narrow  ethnic  wedge, 
represented  by  the  westward  projection  of  Kansu  Province 
between  Mongolia  and  Tibet,  into  the  heart  of  the  Central 
Plateau.  [See  map  page  103.]  Here  the  nomad  Si  Fan  tribes 
dwell  side  by  side  with  Chinese  farmers,53  who  themselves 
show  a  strong  infusion  of  the  Mongolian  and  Tibetan  blood 
to  the  north  and  south,  and  whose  language  is  a  medley  of  all 
three  tongues.54 

In  easternmost  Tibet,  in  the  elevated  province  of  Minjak  Boundary 
(2,600  meters  or  8,500  feet),  M.  Hue  found  in  1846  a  great  ^nea  of 
number  of  Chinese  from  the  neighboring  Sze-Chuan  and  Yun-  ™°U1 
nan  districts  keeping  shops  and  following  the  primary  trades 
and  agriculture.  The  language  of  the  Tibetan  natives  showed 
the  effect  of  foreign  intercourse;  it  was  not  the  pure  speech 
of  Lhassa,  but  was  closely  assimilated  to  the  idiom  of  the 
neighboring  Si  Fan  speech  of  Sze-Chuan  and  contained  many 
Chinese  expressions.  He  found  also  a  modification  of  man- 
ners, customs,  and  costumes  in  this  peripheral  Tibet;  the 
natives  showed  more  of  the  polish,  cunning,  and  covetousness 
of  the  Chinese,  less  of  the  rudeness,  frankness,  and  strong 
religious  feeling  characteristic  of  the  western  plateau  man.55 
Just  across  the  political  boundary  in  Chinese  territory,  the 
border  zone  of  assimilation  shows  predominance  of  the 
Chinese  element  with  a  strong  Tibetan  admixture  both  in  race 
and  civilization.56  Here  Tibetan  traders  with  their  yak 
caravans  are  met  on  the  roads  or  encamped  in  their  tents  by 
the  hundred  about  the  frontier  towns,  whither  they  have 
brought  the  wool,  sheep,  horses,  hides  and  medicinal  roots 
of  the  rough  highland  across  that  "wild  borderland  which 
is  neither  Chinese  nor  Tibetan."  The  Chinese  population 
consists  of  hardy  mountaineers,  who  eat  millet  and  maize  in- 
stead of  rice.  The  prevailing  architecture  is  Tibetan  and 


228  GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 

the  priests  on  the  highways  are  the  red  and  yellow  lamas 
from  the  Buddhist  monasteries  of  the  plateau.  "The  Coun- 
try is  a  cross  between  China  and  Tibet." 

Even  the  high  wall  of  the  Himalayas  does  not  suffice  to 
prevent  similar  exchanges  of  ethnic  elements  and  culture 
between  southern  Tibet  and  northern  India.  Lhassa  and 
Giamda  harbor  many  emigrants  from  the  neighboring  Hima- 
layan state  of  Bhutan,  allow  them  to  monopolize  the  metal 
industry,  in  which  they  excel,  and  to  practise  undisturbed 
their  Indian  form  of  Buddhism.58  The  southern  side  of  this 
zone  of  transition  is  occupied  by  a  Tibetan  stock  of  people 
inhabiting  the  Himalayan  frontiers  of  India  and  practising 
the  Hindu  religion.59  In  the  hill  country  of  northern  Bengal 
natives  are  to  be  seen  with  the  Chinese  queue  hanging  below 
a  Hindu  turban,  or  wearing  the  Hindu  caste  mark  on  their 
broad  Mongolian  faces.  With  these  are  mingled  genuine 
Tibetans  who  have  come  across  the  border  to  work  in  the 
tea  plantations  of  this  region.60  [See  map  page  102.] 
Relation  The  assimilation  of  culture  within  a  boundary  zone  is  in 

of  ethnic        some  respects  the  result  of  race  amalgamation,  as,  for  in- 
stance, in  costume,  religion,  manners  and  language ;  but  in 
similati  economic  points  it  is  often  the  result  of  identical  geographic 

influences  to  which  both  races  are  alike  subjected.  For  ex- 
ample, scarcity  of  food  on  the  arid  plateau  of  Central  Asia 
makes  the  Chinese  of  western  Kansu  eat  butter  and  curds  as 
freely  as  do  the  pastoral  Mongols,  though  such  a  diet  is  ob- 
noxious to  the  purely  agricultural  Chinese  of  the  lowlands.61 
The  English  pioneer  in  the  Trans-Allegheny  wilderness  shared 
with  the  Indians  an  environment  of  trackless  forests  and  sav- 
age neighbors ;  he  was  forced  to  discard  for  a  time  many  es- 
sentials of  civilization,  both  material  and  moral.  Despite  a 
minimum  of  race  intermixture,  the  men  of  the  Cumberland 
and  Kentucky  settlements  became  assimilated  to  the  life  of 
the  red  man  ;  they  borrowed  his  scalping  knife  and  tomahawk, 
adopted  his  method  of  ambush  and  extermination  in  war;  like 
him  they  lived  in  great  part  by  the  chase,  dressed  in  furs  and 
buckskin,  and  wore  the  noiseless  moccasin.  Here  the  mere 
fact  of  geographical  location  on  a  remote  frontier,  and  of 
almost  complete  isolation  from  the  centers  of  English  life 


229 

on  the  Atlantic  slope,  and  the  further  fact  of  persistent  con- 
tact with  a  lower  status  of  civilization,  resulted  in  a  temporary 
return  to  primitive  methods  of  existence,  till  the  settlements 
secured  an  increase  of  population  adequate  for  higher  indus- 
trial development  and  for  defence. 

A  race  boundary  involves  almost  inevitably  a  cultural 
boundary,  often,  too,  a  linguistic  and  religionary,  occasion- 
ally a  political  boundary.  The  last  three  are  subject  to  wide 
fluctuation,  frequently  overstepping  all  barriers  of  race  and 
contrasted  civilizations.  Though  one  often  accompanies 
another,  it  is  necessary  to  distinguish  the  different  kinds  of 
boundaries  and  to  estimate  their  relative  importance  in  the 
history  of  a  people  or  state.  We  may  lay  down  the  rule 
that  the  greater,  more  permanent,  and  deep-seated  the  con- 
trasts on  the  two  sides  of  a  border,  the  greater  is  its  signifi- 
cance ;  and  that,  on  this  basis,  boundaries  rank  in  importance, 
with  few  exceptions,  in  the  following  order:  racial,  cultural, 
linguistic,  and  political.  The  less  marked  the  contrasts,  in 
general,  the  more  rapid  and  complete  the  process  of  assimi- 
lation in  the  belt  of  borderland. 

The   significance   of  the  border  zone   of  assimilation   for  The 
political  expansion  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  prepares  the  way  boundary 
for  the  advance  of  the  state  boundary  from  either  side ;  in  it      ,.^    . 
the  sharp  edge  of  racial  and  cultural  antagonism  is  removed,  expansion, 
or  for  this  antagonism  a  new  affinity  may  be  substituted. 
The  zone  of  American   settlement,  industry,   and  commerce 
which  in  1836  projected  beyond  the  political  boundary  of 
the  Sabine  River  over  the  eastern  part  of  Mexican  Texas 
facilitated  the  later  incorporation  of  the  State  into  the  Union, 
just  as  a   few  years   earlier  the  Baton   Rouge  District   of 
Spanish  West  Florida  had  gravitated  to  the  United  States 
by  reason  of  the  predominant  American  element  there,  and 
thus  extended  the  boundary  of  Louisiana  to  the  Pearl  River. 
When  the   political   boundary   of   Siberia   was   fixed   at   the 
Amur    River,    the    Muscovite    government    began    extending 
the  border  zone  of  assimilation  far  to  the  south  of  that  stream 
by  the  systematic  Russification  of  Manchuria,  with  a  view  to 
its    ultimate    annexation.      Schleswig-Holstein    and    Alsace- 
Lorraine,  by  reason  of  their  large  German  population,  have 


2130 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 


Tendency 
toward 
defection 
along  polit- 
ical fron- 
tiers. 


been  readily  incorporated  into  the  German  Empire.  Only  in 
Lorraine  has  a  considerable  French  element  retarded  the 
process.  The  considerable  sprinkling  of  Germans  over  the 
Baltic  provinces  of  Russia  and  Poland  west  of  the  Vistula, 
and  a  certain  Teutonic  stamp  of  civilization  which  these  dis- 
tricts have  received,  would  greatly  facilitate  the  eastward 
extension  of  the  German  Empire;  while  their  common  reli- 
gions, both  Protestant  and  Roman  Catholic,  would  help 
obliterate  the  old  political  fissure.  Thus  the  borderland  of  a 
country,  so  markedly  difFerentiated  from  its  interior,  per- 
forms a  certain  historical  function,  and  becomes,  as  it  were, 
an  organ  of  the  living,  growing  race  or  state. 

Location  on  a  frontier  involves  remoteness  from  the  center 
of  national,  cultural,  and  political  .activities;  these  reach  their 
greatest  intensity  in  the  core  of  the  nation  and  exercise  on  Iv- 
an attenuated  influence  on  the  far-away  borders,  unless  ex- 
cellent means  of  communication  keep  up  a  circulation  of  men, 
commodities,  and  ideas  between  center  and  periphery.  For 
the  frontier,  therefore,  the  centripetal  force  is  weakened ;  the 
centrifugal  is  strengthened  often  by  the  attraction  of  some 
neighboring  state  or  tribe,  which  has  established  bonds  of 
marriage,  trade,  and  friendly  intercourse  with  the  outlying 
community.  Moreover,  the  mere  infusion  of  foreign  blood, 
customs,  and  ideas,  especially  a  foreign  religion,  which  is 
characteristic  of  a  border  zone,  invades  the  national  solidar- 
ity. Hence  we  find  that  a  tendency  to  political  defection  con- 
stantly manifests  itself  along  the  periphery.  A  long  reach 
weakens  the  arm  of  authority,  especially  where  serious  geo- 
graphical barriers  intervene;  hence  border  uprisings  are 
usually  successful,  at  least  for  a  time.  When  accomplished, 
they  involve  that  shrinkage  of  the  frontiers  which  we  have 
found  to  be  the  unmistakable  symptom  of  national  decline. 

This  defection  shows  itself  most  promptly  in  conquered 
border  tribes  of  different  blood,  who  lack  the  bond  of  ethnic 
affinity,  and  whose  remoteness  emboldens  them  to  throw  off 
the  political  yoke.  The  decay  of  the  Roman  Empire,  after 
its  last  display  of  energy  under  Trajan,  was  registered  in  the 
revolt  of  its  peripheral  districts  beyond  the  Euphrates,  Dan- 
ube, and  Rhine,  as  also  in  the  rapid  Teutonization  of  eastern 


231 

Gaul,  which  here  prepared  the  way  for  the  assertion  of  inde- 
pendence. The  border  satraps  of  the  ancient  Persian  Em- 
pire were  constantly  revolting,  as  the  history  of  Asia  Minor 
shows.  Aragon,  Old  Castile,  and  Portugal  were  the  first 
kingdoms  in  the  Iberian  Peninsula  to  throw  off  Saracen 
dominion.  Mountain  ranges  and  weary  stretches  of  desert 
roads  enabled  the  rebellions  in  Chinese  Turkestan  and  the 
border  districts  of  Sungaria  in  1863  to  be  maintained  for 
several  years.62 

A  feeble  grasp  upon  remote  peripheral  possessions  is  often  Centrifugal 
further  weakened  by  the  resistance  of  an  immigrant  popula- 
tion  from  beyond  the  boundary,  which  brings  with  it  new  frontjer 
ideas  of  government.  This  was  the  geographical  history  of 
the  Texan  revolt.  A  location  on  the  far  northern  outskirts 
of  Mexican  territory,  some  twelve  hundred  miles  from  the 
capital,  rendered  impossible  intelligent  government  control, 
the  enforcement  of  the  laws,  and  prompt  defence  against  the 
Indians.  Remoteness  weakened  the  political  cohesion.  More 
than  this,  the  American  ethnic  boundary  lapped  far  over 
eastern  Texas,  forming  that  border  zone  of  two-fold  race 
which  we  have  come  to  know.  This  alien  stock,  antagonistic 
to  the  national  ideals  emanating  from  the  City  of  Mexico, 
dominant  over  the  native  population  by  reason  of  its  intelli- 
gence, energy,  and  wealth,  ruptured  the  feeble  political  bond 
and  asserted  the  independence  of  Texas.  Quite  similar  was 
the  history  of  the  "Independent  State  of  Acre,"  which  in  1899 
grew  up  just  within  the  Bolivian  frontier  under  the  leadership 
of  Brazilian  caoutchouc  gatherers,  resisted  the  collection  of 
taxes  by  the  Bolivian  government,  and  four  years  later  se- 
cured annexation  to  Brazil.63 

Even  when  no  alien  elements  are  present  to  weaken  the 
race  bond,  if  natural  barriers  intervene  to  obstruct  and  retard 
communications  between  center  and  periphery,  the  frontier 
community  is  likely  to  develop  the  spirit  of  defection,  espe- 
cially if  its  local  geographic,  and  hence  social,  conditions  are 
markedly  different  from  those  of  the  governing  center.  This 
is  the  explanation  of  that  demand  for  independent  statehood 
which  was  rife  in  our  Trans- Allegheny  settlements  from  1785 
to  1795,  and  of  that  separatist  movement  which  advocated 


232  GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 

political  alliance  with  either  the  British  colonies  to  the  north 
or  the  Spanish  to  the  west,  because  these  were  nearer  and 
offered  easier  access  to  the  sea.  f'A  frontier  location  and  an 
intervening  mountain  barrier  were  important  factors  in  the 
Whisky  Rebellion  in  western  Pennsylvania,  just  as  similar 
conditions  later  suggested  the  secession  of  the  Pacific  States 
from  the  Union.  Disaffection  from  the  government  was  mani- 
fested by  the  Trek  Boers  of  early  South  Africa,  "especially 
by  those  who  dwelt  in  the  outlying  districts  where  the  Gov- 
ernment had  exerted  and  could  exert  little  control."  In  1795 
the  people  of  Graaf-Reinct,  a  frontier  settlement  of  that 
time,  revolted  against  the  Dutch  South  African  Company 
and  set  up  a  miniature  republic.64 

The  spirit  *phe  spirit  of  the  colonial  frontier  is  the  spirit  of  freedom, 

the  spirit  of  men  who  have  traveled  far,  who  are  surcharged 
with  energy,  enterprise  and  self-reliance,  often  with  impa- 
tience of  restraint.  A  severe  process  of  elimination  culls  out 
for  the  frontier  a  population  strikingly  differentiated  from 
the  citizens  of  the  old  inhabited  centers.  Then  remoteness  of 
location  and  abundance  of  opportunity  proceed  to  empha- 
size the  qualities  which  have  squeezed  through  the  sieve  of 
natural  and  social  selection.  This  is  the  type  bred  upon  our 
own  frontier,  which,  West  beyond  West,  has  crossed  the  con- 
tinent from  the  backwoods  of  the  Allegheny  Mountains  to 
the  Pacific.  The  Siberian  frontier  develops  much  the  same 
type  on  the  eastern  edge  of  the  Russian  Empire.  Here  army 
officers  find  a  compensation  for  their  rough  surrounding  in 
the  escape  from  the  excessive  bureaucracy  of  the  capitals. 
Here  is  to  be  noted  the  independence,  self-reliance  and  self- 
respect  characteristic  of  other  colonial  frontiers.  The  Rus- 
sian of  the  Asiatic  border  is  proud  to  call  himself  a  Siberian : 
he  is  already  differentiated  in  his  own  consciousness.  The 
force  of  Moscow  tradition  and  discipline  is  faint  when  it 
reaches  him,  it  has  traveled  so  far.  Even  the  elaborate 
observances  of  the  orthodox  Greek  Church  tend  to  become 
simplified  on  the  frontier.  The  question  naturally  arises 
whether  in  the  Russian  Empire,  as  in  the  United  States,  the 
political  periphery  will  in  time,  react  upon  the  center,  infuse 
it  with  the  spirit  of  progress  and  youth.85 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES      233 

When  to  a  border  situation  is  added  a  geographic  location  Free  bor- 
affording  conditions  of  long-established  isolation,  this  ten-  dw  states 
dency  to  maintain  political  autonomy  becomes  very  pro-  M  P? 
nounced.  This  is  the  explanation  of  so  many  frontier  moun- 
tain states  that  have  retained  complete  or  partial  independ- 
ence, such  as  Nepal,  Bhutan,  the  Asturias,  which  successfully 
withstood  Saracen  attack,  and  Montenegro,  which  has  re- 
pelled alike  Venetian,  Servian,  and  Turkish  dominion.  Eu- 
rope especially  has  numerous  examples  of  these  unabsorbed 
border  states,  whose  independence  represents  the  equilibrium 
of  the  conflicting  political  attractions  about  them.  But  all 
these  smallest  fragments  of  political  territory  have  either 
some  commercial  or  semi-political  union  with  one  or  another 
of  their  neighbors.  The  little  independent  principality  of 
Liechtenstein,  wedged  in  between  Switzerland  and  the  Tyrol, 
is  included  in  the  customs  union  of  Austro-Hungary.  The 
small,  independent  duchy  of  Luxemburg,  which  has  been  at- 
tached in  turn  to  all  the  great  states  which  have  grown  up 
along  its  borders,  is  included  in  the  Zollverein  of  Germany. 
The  republic  of  Andorra,  far  up  in  a  lofty  valley  of  the 
Pyrenees,  which  has  maintained  its  freedom  for  a  thousand 
years,  acknowledges  certain  rights  of  suzerainty  exercised 
by  France  and  the  Spanish  bishopric  of  Urgel.66 

Oftentimes  a  state  gains  by  recognizing  this  freedom-loving  Guardians 
spirit  of  the  frontier,  and  by  turning  it  to  account  for  na-  °*  *^e 
tional  defence  along  an  exposed  boundary.  In  consequence 
of  the  long  wars  between  Scotland  and  England,  to  the 
Scotch  barons  having  estates  near  the  Border  were  given  the 
Wardenships  of  the  Marches,  offices  of  great  power  and  dig- 
nity ;  and  their  clans,  accustomed  only  to  the  imperfect  mili- 
tary organization  demanded  by  the  irregular  but  persistent 
hostilities  of  the  time  and  place,  developed  a  lawless  spirit. 
Prohibited  from  agriculture  by  their  exposed  location,  they 
left  their  fields  waste,  and  lived  by  pillage  and  cattle-lifting 
from  their  English  and  even  their  Scotch  neighbors.  The 
valor  of  these  southern  clans,  these  "reivers  of  the  Border," 
was  the  bulwark  of  Scotland  against  the  English,  but  their 
mutinous  spirit  resisted  the  authority  of  the  king  and  led  them 
often  to  erect  semi-independent  principalities.67 


234 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 


Border 
nomads  as 
frontier 
police. 


China  has  fringed  her  western  boundaries  with  quasi- 
independent  tribes  whose  autonomy  is  assured  and  whose  love 
of  freedom  is  a  guarantee  of  guerilla  warfare  against  any 
invader  from  Central  Asia.  The  Mantze  tribes  in  the  moun- 
tain borders  of  Sze-Chuan  province  have  their  own  rulers  and 
customs,  and  only  pay  tribute  to  China.68  The  highlands  of 
Kansu  are  sprinkled  with  such  independent  tribes.  Some- 
times a  definite  bargain  is  entered  into — a  self-governing 
military  organization  and  a  yearly  sum  of  money  in  return 
for  defence  of  the  frontier.  The  Mongol  tribes  of  the  Char- 
kar  country  or  "Borderland"  just  outside  the  Great  Wall 
northwest  of  Pekin  constitute  a  paid  army  of  the  Emperor 
to  guard  the  frontier  against  the  Khalkhas  of  northern 
Mongolia,  the  tribe  of  Genghis  Khan.69  Similarly,  semi- 
independent  military  communities  for  centuries  made  a  con- 
tinuous line  of  barriers  against  the  raids  of  the  steppe 
nomads  along  the  southern  and  southeastern  frontiers  of  Rus- 
sia, from  the  Dnieper  to  the  Ural  rivers.  There  were  the 
"Free  Cossacks,"  located  on  the  debatable  ground  between 
the  fortified  frontier  of  the  agricultural  steppe  and  maraud- 
ing Crimean  Tartars.  Nominally  subjects  of  the  Czar,  they 
obeyed  him  when  it  suited  them,  and  on  provocation  rose  in 
open  revolt.  The  Cossacks  of  the  Dnieper,  who  to  the  mid- 
dle of  the  seventeenth  century  formed  Poland's  border  de- 
fence against  Tartar  invasion,  were  jealous  of  any  inter- 
ference with  their  freedom.  They  lent  their  sen-ices  on 
occasions  to  the  Sultan  of  Turkey,  and  even  to  the  Crimean 
Khan;  and  finally,  in  1681,  attached  themselves  and  their 
territory  to  Russia.70  Here  speaks  that  spirit  of  defection 
which  is  the  natural  product  of  the  remoteness  and  inde- 
pendence of  frontier  life.  The  Russians  also  attached  to 
themselves  the  Kalmucks  located  between  the  lower  Volga 
and  Don,  and  used  them  as  a  frontier  defence  against  their 
Tartar  and  Kirghis  neighbors.71  In  this  case,  as  in  that  of 
the  Cossacks  and  the  Charkars  of  eastern  Mongolia,  we  have 
a  large  body  of  men  living  in  the  same  arid  grassland,  lead- 
ing the  same  pastoral  life,  and  carrying  on  the  same  kind 
of  warfare  as  the  nomadic  marauders  whose  pillaging,  cattle- 
lifting  raids  they  aim  to  suppress.  The  imperial  orders  to  the 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES  235 

Charkars  limit  them  strictly  to  the  life  of  herdmen,  with  the 
purpose  of  maintaining  their  mobility  and  military  efficiency. 
So  in  olden  times,  for  the  Don  Cossacks  agriculture  was  pro- 
hibited on  pain  of  death,  lest  they  should  lose  their  taste  for 
the  live-stock  booty  of  a  punitive  raid.  A  still  earlier  in- 
stance of  this  utilization  of  border  nomads  is  found  in  the 
first  century  after  Christ,  when  the  Romans  made  the  Ara- 
bian tribe  of  Beni  Jafre,  dwelling  on  the  frontier  of  Syria, 
the  warders  of  the  eastern  marches  of  the  Empire.72 

The  advancing  frontier  of  an  expanding  people  often  car-  Lawless 
ries  them  into  a  sparsely  settled  country  where  the  unruly  citizens 

members  of  society  can  with  advantage  be  utilized  as  colon-    eP°rted   to 
.  .  ...  v     j         j      •   •!•     j    n       •      i  frontiers. 

ists.  Arter  centralized  and  civilized  Russia  began  to  en- 
croach with  the  plow  upon  the  pastures  of  the  steppe 
Cossacks,  and  finally  suppressed  these  military  republics, 
the  more  turbulent  and  obstinate  remnants  of  them  she  col- 
onized along  the  Kuban  and  Terek  rivers,  to  serve  as  bul- 
warks against  the  incursions  of  the  Caucasus  tribes  and  as 
the  vanguard  of  the  advance  southward.73 

This  is  one  principle  underlying  the  transportation  of 
criminals  to  the  frontier.  They  serve  to  hold  the  new  coun- 
try. There  these  waste  elements  of  civilization  are  converted 
into  a  useful  by-product.  They  may  be  only  political  rad- 
icals or  religious  dissenters :  if  so,  so  much  the  better  colonial 
material.  The  Russian  government  formerly  transported 
the  rebellious  sect  of  the  Molokans  or  Unitarians  to  the  out- 
skirts of  the  Empire,  where  the  danger  of  contagion  was  re- 
duced. Hence  they  are  to  be  found  to-day  scattered  in  the 
Volga  province  of  Samara,  on  the  border  of  the  Kirghis 
steppe,  in  the  Crimea,  the  Caucasus,  and  Siberia,  still  faith- 
ful and  still  persecuted.74  Since  1709  the  Russian  advance 
into  Siberia  has  planted  its  milestones  in  settlements  formed 
of  prisoners  of  war,  political  exiles,  and  worse  offenders.75 
Penal  colonists  located  on  the  shores  of  Kamchatka  helped 
build  and  man  the  crazy  boats  which  set  out  for  Alaska  at 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  China  settles  its  thieves 
and  cheats  among  the  villages  of  its  own  border  provinces 
of  Shensi76  and  Kansu ;  but  its  worst  criminals  it  transports 
far  away  to  the  Hi  country  on  the  western  frontier  of  the 


236 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 


Drift  of 
lawless  ele- 
ments to 
the  fron- 
tiers. 


Asylums 
beyond 
the  border. 


Empire,  where  they  have  doubtless  contributed  to  the  spirit 
of  revolt  that  has  there  manifested  itself.77 

The  abundance  of  opportunity  and  lack  of  competition  in 
a  new  frontier  community,  its  remoteness  from  the  center 
of  authority,  and  its  imperfect  civil  government  serve  to  at- 
tract thither  the  vicious,  as  well  as  the  sturdy  and 
enterprising.  The  society  of  the  early  Trans-Allegheny 
frontier  included  both  elements.  The  lawless  who  drifted 
to  the  border  formed  gangs  of  horse  thieves,  highwaymen, 
and  murderers,  who  called  forth  from  the  others  the  summary 
methods  of  lynch  law.78  North  Carolina,  which  in  its  early 
history  formed  the  southern  frontier  of  Virginia,  swarmed 
with  ruffians  who  had  fled  thither  to  escape  imprisonment  or 
hanging,  and  whose  general  attitude  was  to  resist  all  regular 
authority  and  especially  to  pay  no  taxes.79  Similarly,  that 
wide  belt  of  mountain  forest  which  forms  the  waste  boundary 
between  Korea  and  Manchuria  is  the  resort  of  bandits,  who 
have  harried  both  sides  of  the  border  ever  since  this  neutral 
district  was  established  in  the  thirteenth  century.80  The 
frontier  communities  of  the  Russian  Cossacks  in  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries  were  regular  asylums  for 
runaway  serfs  and  peasants  who  were  fleeing  from  taxation ; 
their  hetmans  were  repeatedly  fugitive  criminals.  The  east- 
ern border  of  Russia  formed  by  the  Volga  basin  in  1775  was 
described  as  "an  asylum  for  malcontents  and  vagabonds  of 
all  kinds,  ruined  nobles,  disfrocked  monks,  military  deserters, 
fugitive  serfs,  highwaymen,  and  Volga  pirates" — disorderly 
elements  which  contributed  greatly  to  the  insurrection  led  by 
the  Ural  Cossacks  in  that  year.81  "The  Debatable  Land,"  a 
tract  between  the  Esk  and  Sark  rivers,  formerly  claimed  by 
both  England  and  Scotland,  was  long  the  haunt  of  thieves, 
outlaws  and  vagabonds,  as  indeed  was  the  whole  Border,  sub- 
ject as  it  was  to  the  regular  jurisdiction  of  neither  side.82 

Just  beyond  the  political  boundary,  where  police  author- 
ity comes  to  an  end  and  where  pursuit  is  cut  short  or  re- 
tarded, the  fleeing  criminal  finds  his  natural  asylum.  Hence 
all  border  districts  tend  to  harbor  undesirable  refugees  from 
the  other  side.  Deserters  and  outlaws  from  China  proper 
sprinkle  the  eastern  districts  of  Mongolia.83  Marauding 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES  237 

bands  of  Apaches  and  Sioux,  after  successful  depredations 
on  American  ranches,  for  years  fled  across  the  line  into  Mex- 
ico and  Canada  before  the  hammering  hoof-beats  of  Texas 
Ranger  and  United  States  cavalry,  until  a  treaty  with  Mex- 
ico in  1882,  authorizing  such  armed  pursuit  to  cross  the 
boundary,  cut  off  at  least  one  asylum.84  Our  country  ex- 
changes other  undesirable  citizens  with  its  northern  and 
southern  neighbors  in  cases  where  no  extradition  treaty  pro- 
vides for  their  return ;  and  the  borders  of  the  individual 
states  are  crossed  and  recrossed  by  shifty  gentlemen  seek- 
ing to  dodge  the  arm  of  the  law.  The  fact  that  so  many 
State  boundaries  fall  in  the  Southern  Appalachians,  where 
illicit  distilling  and  feud  murders  provide  most  of  the  cases 
on  the  docket,  has  materially  retarded  the  suppression  of 
these  crimes  by  increasing  the  difficulty  both  of  apprehending 
the  offender  and  of  subpoenaing  the  reluctant  witness. 

Dissatisfied,  oppressed,  or  persecuted  members  of  a  polit-  Border 
ical  community  are  prone  to  seek  an  asylum  across  the  near-  refugees 

est  border,   where   happier   or   freer   conditions   of  life   are 

mingling, 
promised.      There  they  contribute  to  that  mixture  of  race 

which  characterizes  every  boundary  zone,  though  as  an  em- 
bittered people  they  may  also  help  to  emphasize  any  existing 
political  or  religious  antagonism.  The  Revocation  of  the 
Edict  of  Nantes  in  1685  was  followed  by  an  exodus  of  Hu- 
guenots from  France  to  the  Protestant  states  of  Switzerland, 
the  Palatinate  of  the  Rhine,  and  Holland,  as  also  across  the 
Channel  into  southern  England;  just  as  in  recent  years  the 
Slav  borderland  of  eastern  Germany  has  received  a  large 
immigration  of  Polish  Jews  from  Russia.  When  the  Polish 
king  in  1571  executed  the  leader  of  the  Dnieper  Cossacks, 
thousands  of  these  bold  borderers  left  their  country  and 
joined  the  community  of  the  Don;  and  in  1722  after  the 
Dnieper  community  had  been  crushed  by  Peter  the  Great,  a 
similar  exodus  took  place  across  the  southern  boundary  into 
the  Crimea,  whereby  the  Tartar  horde  was  strengthened,  just 
as  a.  few  years  before,  during  an  unsuccessful  revolt  of  the 
Don  Cossacks,  some  two  thousand  of  the  malcontents  crossed 
the  southern  frontier  to  the  Kuban  River  in  Circassia.85  The 
establishment  of  American  independence  in  1783  saw  an  ex- 


238 

odus  of  loyalists  from  the  United  States  into  the  contiguous 
districts  of  Ontario,  New  Brunswick,  and  Spanish  Florida. 
Five  years  later  discontent  with  the  Federal  Government  for 
its  dilatory  opposition  to  the  occlusion  of  the  Mississippi  and 
the  lure  of  commercial  betterment  sent  many  citizens  of  the 
early  Trans-Allegheny  commonwealths  to  the  Spanish  side 
of  the  Mississippi,88  while  the  Natchez  District  on  the  east 
bank  of  the  river  contained  a  sprinkling  of  French  who  had 
become  dissatisfied  with  Spanish  rule  in  Louisiana  and 
changed  their  domicile. 

These  are  some  of  the  movements  of  individuals  and  groups 
which  contribute  to  the  blending  of  races  along  every  fron- 
tier, and  make  of  the  boundary  a  variable  zone,  as  opposed 
to  the  rigid  artificial  line  in  terms  of  which  we  speak. 


NOTES    TO    CHAPTER    VII 

1.  A.  W.  Greely,  Eeport  of  the  Lady  Franklin  Bay  Expedition,  Vol.  I, 
pp.  28-33,  236.    Misc.  Doc.  No.  393.    Washington,  1888. 

2.  A.  P.  Engelhardt,  A  Eussian  Province  of  the  North,  pp.   123-130. 
Translated  from  the  Russian.     London,  1899. 

3.  Nordenskiold,  Voyage  of  the  Vega,  pp.  60-62.     New  York,  1882. 

4.  Ibid.,  pp.  146,  161. 

5.  Col.  F.  E.  Younghusband,  The  Heart  of  a  Continent,  pp.  194-199. 
London,  1904. 

6.  A.  R.  Wallace,  Geographical  Distribution  of  Animals,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
387-389,  426-431,  436-438.     London,  1876. 

7.  Ibid.,  409,  424. 

8.  A.    Heilprin,   Geographical   Distribution   of   Animals,   pp.    105-108. 
London,  1894. 

9.  A.  R.  Wallace,  Geographical  Distribution  of  Animals,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
313,  321-322.     London,   1876. 

10.  Anatole  Leroy-Beaulieu,  The  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  Vol.  I,  ethno- 
graphical map.     New  York,  1893. 

11.  Eleventh  Census  of  the  United  States,  Population,  Part  I.,  maps  mi 
pp.  xviii-xxiii. 

12.  L.  March  Phillipps,  In  the  Desert,  pp.  64-68,  77.    London,  1905. 

13.  Fully  treated   in   E.   C.   Semple,   American    History   and   Its   Geo- 
graphic Conditions,  pp.   22-31.     Boston,   1903. 

14.  Sir  S.  W.  Baker,  The  Nile  Tributaries  of  Abyssinia,  pp.  88,  128- 
129,    135.      Hartford,   1868. 

15.  Norway,  Official  Publication  for  the  Paris  Exhibition,  pp.  3-4  and 
map.     Christiania,  1900. 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES  239 

16.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  p.  297.     London,  1903. 

17.  Csesar,  Bella  Gallico,  Book  IV,  chap.  3  and  Book  VI,  chap.  23. 

18.  Ibid.,  Book  VI,  chap.  10. 

19.  T.  Hodgkin,  Italy  and  Her  Invaders,  Vol.  II,  p.  56,  note  I.    Ox- 
ford,  1892. 

20.  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  IV,  p.  510.     New  York,  1902- 
1906. 

21.  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  IX,  chap.  70,  pp.  99,  115.     New 
York,  1859. 

22.  Dr.  Wilhelm  Junker,  Travels  in  Africa,  pp.  18,  45,  79,  87,  115,  117, 
138,  191,  192,  200,  308,  312,  325,  332.     Translated  from  the  German. 
London,  1892. 

23.  H.  Barth,  Human  Society  in  North  Central  Africa,  Journal  Royal 
Geographical  Society,  Vol.  XXX,  pp.  123-124.     London,  1860. 

24.  Boyd  Alexander,  From  the  Niger  to  the  Nile,  Vol.  II,  pp.  163-164. 
London,  1907. 

25.  John  H.  Speke,  Discovery  of  the  Sources  of  the  Nile,  pp.  74,  89,  91, 
94,  95,  173,  176-177,  197.     New  York,  1868. 

26.  Theodore  Eoosevelt,  The  Winning  of  the  West,  Vol.  I,  pp.  50,  70, 
135.     New  York,  1895. 

27.  C.  C.  Koyce,  The  Cherokee  Nations  of  Indians,  p.  140.    Fifth  An- 
nual Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology.    Washington,  1884. 

28.  Albert  J.  Pickett,  History  of  Alabama,  pp.  79-89,  113-115,  1851. 
Reprint,  Birmingham,  1900.     James  Adair,  History  of  the  American  In- 
dians, p.  257.     London,  1775. 

29.  Ibid.,  pp.  252-3,  282. 

30.  Albert  J.  Pickett,  History  of  Alabama,  pp.  133-135.   1851.  Reprint, 
Birmingham,  1900. 

31.  Archibald  Little,  The  Far  East,  p.  249.     Oxford,  1905. 

32.  M.  Hue,  Travels  in  Tartary,  Thibet  and  China,  1844-1846,  Vol.  I, 
p.  74.     Translated  from  the  French.     Reprint,  Chicago,  1898. 

33.  Nachtigal,  Sahara  und  Sudan,  Vol.  I,  pp.  102,  448;  Vol.  Ill,  pp. 
203-205,  314.     Leipzig,  1889.     Boyd  Alexander,  From  the  Niger  to  the 
Nile,  Vol.  II,  p.  170.     London,  1907. 

34.  Albert  J.  Pickett,  History  of  Alabama,  pp.   118-119.      1851.     Re- 
print, Birmingham,  1900. 

35.  Norway,  Official  Publication  for  the  Paris  Exhibition,  pp.  5,  83-84. 
Christiania,  1900. 

36.  Albert  J.   Pickett,   History  of  Alabama,  pp.   416,  417,  461,  467. 
1857.     Reprint,  Birmingham,  1900. 

37.  C.  E.  Akers,  History  of  South  America,  1854-1904,  p.  435.     New 
York,  1904. 

38.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  883.     New  York,  1902. 

39.  Matias  Romero,  Mexico  and  the  United  States,  pp.  433-441.     New 
York,  1898. 

40.  E.  Hertslet,  The  Map  of  Europe  by  Treaty,  1814-1875,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
422,  425,  426 ;  Vol.  II,  p.  1430. 

41.  Eleventh  Census  of  the  United  States,  Population,  Part  I.,  map  No. 
10  and  p.  cxliii. 

42.  Ibid.     Based  on  comparison  of  Tables  15  and  33  for  the  States 
mentioned. 

43.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  250-253.     New  York,  1899. 


240  GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 

44.  W.  Deecke,  Italy,  pp.  325,  347,  349.     Translated  from  the  German. 
London,  1904. 

45.  Sydow-Wagner,  Methodischer  Schul-Atlas,    Volker  und   Sprachen- 
Icarten,  No.  13.     Gotha,  1905.     W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  282- 
284.     New  York,  1899. 

46.  Ibid.,  pp.  255-257.     W.  Deecke,  Italy,  p.  357.     London,  1904. 

47.  Sydow-Wagner,   Methodischer   Schul-Atlas,   Volker   und   Sprachen- 
Icarten  No.  13.    Gotha,  1905. 

48.  Hugh  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  309.     New  York,  1902. 

49.  D.  M.  Wallace,  Russia,  pp.  151-155.     New  York,  1904. 

50.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  p.  362.     New  York,  1899. 

51.  Archibald  Little,  The  Far  East.     Map  p.  8  and  pp.  171-172.     Ox- 
ford, 1905.     M.  Hue,  Travels  in  Tartary,  Thibet  and  China,  1844-1846. 
Vol.  I,  pp.  2-4,  21,  197-201,  284.     Reprint,  Chicago,  1898. 

52.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  166-170. 

53.  Ibid.,  Vol  II,  p.  23. 

54.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  312-313. 

55.  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  319-322,  327. 

56.  M.  Hue,  Journey  through  the  Chinese  Empire,  Vol.  I,  p.  36.     New 
York,  1871. 

57.  Isabella  Bird. Bishop,  The  Yangtze  Valley  and  Beyond,  Vol.  II,  pp. 
70-71,  88,  91,  92,  104-109,   113,  117,   133,  134,  155,   194,   195.     London, 
1900. 

58.  M.  Hue,  Travels  in  Tartary,  Thibet  and  China,  1844-1846,  Vol.  II, 
pp.  155-156,  264.     Reprint,  Chicago,  1898. 

59.  C.  A.  Sherring,  Western  Tibet  and  the  British  Borderland,  pp.  60, 
65-73,  205,  347-358.     London,  1906.     Statistical  Atlas  of  India,  pp.  61- 
62,  maps.     Calcutta,  1895.    Imperial  Gazetteer  of  India,  Vol.  I,  p.  295- 
296.     Oxford,  1907. 

60.  Eliza  R.  Scidmore,  Winter  India,  pp.  106-108.     New  York,  1903. 

61.  M.  Hue,  Travels  in  Tartary,  Thibet,  and  China,  1844-1846,  Vol.  I, 
pp.  312-313.     Reprint,  Chicago,  1898. 

62.  Alexis  Krausse,  Russia  in  Asia,  pp.  174-175.     New  York,  1899. 

63.  Charles  E.  Akers,  History  of  South  America,   1854-1904,  p.  562. 
New  York,  1904. 

64.  James  Bryce,   Impressions  of   South   Africa,   pp.    108-109.     New 
York,  1897. 

65.  O.  P.  Crosby,  Tibet  and  Turkestan,  pp.  15-20. 

66.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  378.    New  York,  1902.    H. 
Spencer,  A  Visit  to  Andorra,  Fortnightly  Seview,  Vol.  67,  pp.  44-60. 
1897. 

67.  Wm.  Robertson,  History  of  Scotland,  pp.  19-20.     New  York,  1831. 
The  Scotch  Borderers,  Littell's  Living  Age,  Vol  40,  p.  180. 

68.  Isabella  Bird  Bishop,  The  Yangtze  Valley  and  Beyond,  Vol.  II,  pp. 
209-210.     London,  1900. 

69.  M.  Hue,  Travels  in  Tartary,  Thibet  and  China,  1844-1846,  Vol.  I, 
pp.  41,  42,  97.    Reprint,  Chicago,  1898. 

70.  D.  M.  Wallace,  Russia,  pp.  352-356.    New  York,  1904.    Article  on 
Cossacks  in  Encyclopedia  Britannica. 

71.  Pallas,  Travels  in  Southern  Russia,  Vol.  I,  pp.  126-129;  442;  Vol. 
II,  pp.  330-331.     London,  1812. 


GEOGRAPHICAL  BOUNDARIES 

72.  G.   Adam  Smith,   Historical   Geography  of   the   Holy   Land,  p.   9. 
New  York,  1897. 

73.  D.  M.  Wallace,  Russia,  p.  358.    New  York,  1904.    Walter  K.  Kelly, 
History  of  Eussia,  Vol.  II,  pp.  394-395.     London,  1881. 

74.  D.  M.  Wallace,  Eussia,  p.  298.     New  York,  1904. 

75.  Alexis  Krausse,  Russia  in  Asia,  pp.  43,  53.     New  York,  1899. 

76.  Francis   H.   Nichol,   Through   Hidden   Shensi,   pp.    139-140.      New 
York,  1902. 

77.  ii.  Hue,  Travels  in  Tartary,  Thibet  and  China,  1844-1846,  Vol.  I, 
p.  23.    Reprint,  Chicago,  1898. 

78.  Theodore  Eoosevelt,  The  Winning  of  the  West,  Vol.  I,  pp.  130-132. 
New  York,  1895. 

79.  John  Fiske,  Old  Virginia  and  Her  Neighbors,  Vol.  II,  pp.  311, 
315-321.     Boston,  1897. 

80.  Archibald  Little,  The  Far  East,  p.  249.     Oxford,  1905. 

81.  Alfred   Rambaud,    History    of    Russia,   Vol.    II,   pp.    45,    199-200. 
Boston,  1886. 

82.  Malcolm  Lang,  History  of  Scotland,  Vol.  I,  pp.  42-43.     London, 
1800.     The  Scotch  Borderland,   Gentleman's  Magazine,  Vol.   CCLX,  p. 
191.     1886. 

83.  Friedrich  Ratel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  175.     London, 
1896. 

84.  A.  B.  Hart,  Foundations  of  American  Foreign  Policy,  pp.  81-82. 
New  York,  1901. 

85.  Alfred  Rambaud,  History  of  Russia,  Vol.  II,  pp.  45,  50.     Boston, 
1886. 

86.  Justin  Winsor,  The  Westward  Movement,  p.  366.     Boston,  1899. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


COAST  PEOPLES 

The  coast  OF  all  geographical  boundaries,  the  most  important  is  that 

a  zone  of  between  land  and  sea.  The  coast,  in  its  physical  nature,  is  a 
transition.  zone  of  transition  between  these  two  dominant  forms  of  the 
earth's  surface ;  it  bears  the  mark  of  their  contending  forces, 
varying  in  its  width  with  every  stronger  onslaught  of  the 
unresting  sea,  and  with  every  degree  of  passive  resistance 
made  by  granite  or  sandy  shore.  So  too  in  an  anthropo- 
geographical  sense,  it  is  a  zone  of  transition.  Now  the  life- 
supporting  forces  of  the  land  are  weak  in  it,  and  it  becomes 
merely  the  rim  of  the  sea;  for  its  inhabitants  the  sea  means 
food,  clothes,  shelter,  fuel,  commerce,  highway,  and  oppor- 
tunity. Now  the  coast  is  dominated  by  the  exuberant  forces 
of  a  productive  soil,  so  that  the  ocean  beyond  is  only  a  tur- 
bulent waste  and  a  long-drawn  barrier:  the  coast  is  the  hem 
of  the  land.  Neither  influence  can  wholly  exclude  the  other 
in  this  amphibian  belt,  for  the  coast  remains  the  intermediary 
between  the  habitable  expanse  of  the  land  and  the  inter- 
national highway  of  the  sea.  The  break  of  the  waves  and 
the  dash  of  the  spray  draw  the  line  beyond  which  human 
dwellings  cannot  spread ;  for  these  the  shore  is  the  outermost 
limit,  as  for  ages  also  in  the  long  infancy  of  the  races,  before 
the  invention  of  boat  and  sail,  it  drew  the  absolute  boundary 
to  human  expansion.  In  historical  order,  its  first  effect  has 
been  that  of  a  barrier,  and  for  the  majority  of  peoples  this 
it  has  remained;  but  with  the  development  of  navigation  and 
the  spread  of  human  activities  from  the  land  over  sea  to  other 
countries,  it  became  the  gateway  both  of  land  and  sea — at 
once  the  outlet  for  exploration,  colonization,  and  trade,  and 
the  open  door  through  which  a  continent  or  island  receives 
contributions  of  men  or  races  or  ideas  from  transoceanic 
shores.  Barrier  and  threshold:  these  are  the  roles  which 


COAST  PEOPLES 


blW 

IkttHU'J 


ft       I 


COAST  PEOPLES 


Width  of 

coastal 

zones. 


The  inner 
edge. 


coasts  have  always  played  in  history.  To-day  we  see  tli«.;u 
side  by  side.  But  in  spite  of  the  immense  proportions  as- 
sumed by  transmarine  intercourse,  the  fact  remains  that  the 
greater  part  of  the  coasts  of  the  earth  are  for  their  inhabi- 
tants only  a  barrier  and  not  an  outlet,  or  at  best  only  a  base 
for  timorous  ventures  seaward  that  rarely  lose  sight  of  the 
shore. 

As  intermediary  belt  between  land  and  sea,  the  coast  be- 
comes a  peculiar  habitat  which  leaves  its  mark  upon  its  peo- 
ple. We  speak  of  coast  strips,  coastal  plains,  "tidewater 
country,"  coast  cities;  of  coast  tribes,  coast  peoples,  mari- 
time colonies ;  and  each  word  brings  up  a  picture  of  a  land 
or  race  or  settlement  permeated  by  the  influences  of  the  sea. 
The  old  term  of  "coastline"  has  no  application  to  such  an 
intermediary  belt,  for  it  is  a  zone  of  measurable  width ;  and 
this  width  varies  with  the  relief  of  the  land,  the  articulation 
of  the  coast  according  as  it  is  uniform  or  complex,  with  the 
successive  stages  of  civilization  and  the  development  of  navi- 
gation among  the  people  who  inhabit  it. 

Along  highly  articulated  coasts,  showing  the  interpenetra- 
tion  of  sea  and  land  in  a  broad  band  of  capes  and  islands 
separated  by  tidal  channels  and  inlets,  or  on  shores  deeply 
incised  by  river  estuaries,  or  on  low  shelving  beaches  which 
screen  brackish  lagoons  and  salt  marshes  behind  sand  reefs 
and  dune  ramparts,  and  which  thus  form  an  indeterminate 
boundary  of  alternate  land  and  water,  the  zone  character  of 
the  coast  in  a  physical  sense  becomes  conspicuous.  In  an 
anthropological  sense  the  zone  character  is  clearly  indicated 
by  the  different  uses  of  its  inner  and  outer  edge  made  by  man 
in  different  localities  and  in  different  periods  of  history. 

The  old  German  maritime  cities  of  the  North  Sea  and  the 
Baltic  were  located  on  rivers  from  6  to  60  miles  from  the  open 
sea,  always  on  the  inner  edge  of  the  coastal  belt.  Though 
primarily  trading  towns,  linked  together  once  in  the  sove- 
reign confederacy  of  the  Hanseatic  League,  they  fixed  their 
sites  on  the  last  spurs  of  firm  ground  running  out  into  the 
soft,  yielding  alluvium,  which  was  constantly  exposed  to  in- 
undation. Land  high  enough  to  be  above  the  ever  threaten- 
ing flood  of  river  and  storm-driven  tide  on  this  flat  coast,  and 


COAST  PEOPLES  245 

solid  enough  to  be  built  upon,  could  not  be  found  immediately 
on  the  sea.  The  slight  elevations  of  sandy  "geest"  or  detrital 
spurs  were  limited  in  area  and  in  time  outgrown.  Hence  the 
older  part  of  all  these  river  towns,  from  Bremen  to  Konigs- 
berg,  rests  upon  hills,  while  in  every  case  the  newer  and  lower 
part  is  built  on  piles  or  artificially  raised  ground  on  the 
alluvium.1  So  Utrecht,  the  Ultrajectum  of  the  Romans, 
selected  for  its  site  a  long  raised  spur  running  out  from  the 
solid  ground  of  older  and  higher  land  into  the  water- 
soaked  alluvium  of  the  Netherlands.  It  was  the  most  impor- 
tant town  of  all  this  region  before  the  arts  of  civilization 
began  the  conquest  by  dike  and  ditch  of  the  amphibian 
coastal  belt  which  now  comprises  one-fourth  of  the  area  and 
holds  one-half  the  population  of  the  Netherlands.2  So 
ancient  London  marked  the  solid  ground  at  the  inner  edge 
of  the  tidal  flats  and  desolate  marshes  which  lined  the  Thames 
estuary,  as  the  Roman  Camulodunum  and  its  successor  Col- 
chester on  its  steep  rise  or  dun  overlooked  the  marshes  of  the 
Stour  inlet.3  Farther  north  about  the  Wash,  which  in  Roman 
days  extended  far  inland  over  an  area  of  fens  and  tidal  chan- 
nels, Cambridge  on  the  River  Cam,  Huntingdon  and  Stajn-  » 
ford  on  the  Nen,  and  Lincoln  on  the  Witham — all  river  sea- 
ports— defined  the  firm  inner  edge  of  this  wide  low  coast.  In 
the  same  way  the  landward  rim  of  the  tidal  waters  and  salt 
marshes  of  the  Humber  inlet  was  described  by  a  semicircle  of 
British  and  Roman  towns — Doncaster,  Castleford,  Tod- 
caster,  and  York.4  On  the  flat  or  rolling  West  African  coast- 
land,  which  lines  the  long  shores  of  the  Gulf  of  Guinea  with 
a  band  30  to  100  miles  wide,  the  sandy,  swampy  tracts  im- 
mediately on  the  sea  are  often  left  uninhabited;  native  popu- 
lation is  distributed  most  frequently  at  the  limit  of  deep 
water,  and  here  at  head  of  ship-navigation  the  trading 
towns  are  found.5 

While,  on  low  coasts  at  any  rate,  the  inner  edge  tends  to  Inner  edge 
mark  the  limit  of  settlement   advancing  from   the  interior,  *8  head 
as  the  head  of  sea  navigation  on  river  and  inlet  it  has  also  ot 
been  the  goal  of  immigrant  settlers  from  oversea  lands.     The 
history  of  modern  maritime  colonization,  especially  in  Amer- 
ica, shows  that  the  aim  of  regular  colonists,  as  opposed  to 


246 


COAST  PEOPLES 


Shifting 
of  the 


mere  traders,  has  been  to  penetrate  as  far  as  possible  into 
the  land  while  retaining  communication  with  the  sea,  and 
thereby  with  the  mother  country.  The  small  boats  in  use  till 
the  introduction  of  steam  navigation  fixed  this  line  far  inland 
and  gave  the  coastal  zone  a  greater  breadth  than  it  has  at 
present,  and  a  more  regular  contour.  In  colonial  America 
this  inner  edge  coincided  with  the  "fall-line"  of  the  Atlantic 
rivers,  which  was  indicated  by  a  series  of  seaport  towns ;  or 
with  the  inland  limit  of  the  tides,  which  on  the  St.  Lawrence 
fell  above  Quebec,  and  on  the  Hudson  just  below  Albany. 

With  fhe  recent  increase  in  the  size  of  vessels,  two  con- 
trary effects  are  noticed.  In  the  vast  majority  of  cases, 
inner  edge.  fne  inner  edge,  as  marked  by  ports,  moves  seaward  into 
deeper  water,  and  the  zone  narrows.  The  days  when  almost 
every  tobacco  plantation  in  tidewater  Virginia  had  its  own 
wharf  are  long  since  past,  and  the  leaf  is  now  exported  by 
way  of  Norfolk  and  Baltimore.  Seville  has  lost  practically 
all  its  sea  trade  to  Cadiz,  Rouen  to  Havre,  and  Dordrecht 
to  Rotterdam.  In  other  cases  the  zone  preserves  its  original 
width  by  the  creation  of  secondary  ports  on  or  near  the  outer 
edge,  reserved  only  for  the  largest  vessels,  while  the  inner 
harbor,  by  dredging  its  channel,  improves  its  communication 
with  the  sea.  Thus  arises  the  phenomenon  of  twin  ports  like 
Bremen  and  Bremerhaven,  Dantzig  and  Neufahrwasser,  Stet- 
tin and  Swinemiinde,  Bordeaux  and  Pauillac,  London  and 
Tilbury.  Or  the  original  harbor  seeks  to  preserve  its  advan- 
tage by  canalizing  the  shallow  approach  by  river,  lagoon,  or 
bay,  as  St.  Petersburg  by  the  Pantiloff  canal  through  the 
shallow  reaches  of  Kronstadt  Bay ;  or  Konigsberg  by  its  ship 
canal,  carried  for  25  miles  across  the  Frisches  Huff  to  the 
Baltic;6  or  Nantes  by  the  Loire  ship  canal,  which  in  1892 
was  built  to  regain  for  the  old  town  the  West  Indian  trade 
recently  intercepted  by  the  rising  outer  port  of  St.  Nazaire, 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Loire  estuary.7  In  northern  latitudes, 
however,  the  outer  ports  on  enclosed  sea  basins  like  the 
Baltic  become  dominant  in  the  winter,  when  the  inner  ports 
are  ice-bound.  Otherwise  the  outer  port  sinks  with  every 
improvement  in  the  channel  between  the  inner  port  and  the 
sea.  Hamburg  has  so  constantly  deepened  the  Elbe  passage 


COAST  PEOPLES  247 

that  its  outport  of  Cuxhavcn  has  had  little  chance  to  rise, 
and  serves  only  as  an  emergency  harbor ;  while  on  the  Weser, 
maritime  leadership  has  oscillated  between  Bremen  and  Bre- 
merhaven.8  So  the  whole  German  coast  and  the  Russian  Bal- 
tic have  seen  a  more  or  less  irregular  shifting  backward 
and  forward  of  maritime  importance  between  the  inner  and 
the  outer  edges. 

The  width  of  the  coast  zone  is  not  only  prevented  from  Artificial 
contracting  by  dredging  and  canaling,  but  it  is  even  in-  extension 
creased.  By  deepening  the  channel,  the  chief  port  of  the  St.  ° 
Lawrence  River  has  been  removed  from  Quebec  180  miles 
upstream  to  Montreal,  and  that  of  the  Clyde  from  Port  Glas- 
gow 16  miles  to  Glasgow  itself,  so  that  now  the  largest  ocean 
steamers  come  to  dock  where  fifty  years  ago  children  waded 
across  the  stream  at  ebb  tide.  Such  artificial  modifications, 
however,  are  rare,  for  they  are  made  only  where  peculiarly 
rich  resources  or  superior  lines  of  communication  with  the 
hinterland  justify  the  expenditures;  but  they  find  their 
logical  conclusion  in  still  farther  extensions  of  sea  navigation 
into  the  interior  by  means  of  ship  canals,  where  previously 
no  waterway  existed.  Instances  are  found  in  the  Manchester 
ship  canal  and  the  Welland,  which,  by  means  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence and  the  Great  Lakes,  makes  Chicago  accessible  to  ocean 
vessels.  Though  man  distinguishes  between  sea  and  inland 
navigation  in  his  definitions,  in  his  practice  he  is  bound  by 
no  formula  and  recognizes  no  fundamental  difference  where 
rivers,  lakes,  and  canals  are  deep  enough  to  admit  his  sea- 
going craft. 

Such  deep  landward  protrusions  of  the  head  of  marine 
navigation  at  certain  favored  points,  as  opposed  to  its  recent 
coastward  trend  in  most  inlets  and  rivers,  increase  the  ir- 
regularity of  the  inner  edge  of  the  coast  zone  by  the  marked 
discrepancy  between  its  maximum  and  minimum  width.  They 
are  limited,  however,  to  a  few  highly  civilized  countries,  and 
to  a  few  points  in  those  countries.  But  their  presence  testi- 
fies to  the  fact  that  the  evolution  of  the  coast  zone  with  the 
development  of  civilization  shows  the  persistent  importance  Quteredei 
of  this  inner  edge.  in  original 

The  outer  edge  finds  its  greatest  significance,  which  is  for  settlement. 


e 


248 


COAST  PEOPLES 


the  most  part  ephemeral,  in  the  earlier  stages  of  navigation, 
maritime  colonization,  and  in  some  cases  of  original   settle- 
ment.    But  this  importance  persists  only  on  steep  coasts  fur- 
nishing little  or  no  level  ground  for  cultivation  and  barred 
from  interior  hunting  or  grazing  land ;  on  many  coral  and 
volcanic  islands  of  the  Pacific  Ocean  whose  outer  rim  Kd.s  the 
most  fertile  soil  and  furnishes  the  most  abundant  growth  of 
coco  palms,  and  whose  limited  area  only  half  suffices  to  sup- 
port the  population ;  and  in  polar  and  sub-polar  districts, 
where  harsh  climatic  conditions  set  a  low  limit  to  economic 
Outer  edge     development.     In  all  these  regions  the  sea  must  provide  most 
and  food        of  the  food  of  the  inhabitants,  who  can  therefore  never  lose 
supply.  contact  with  its  waters.     In  mountainous  Tierra  del  Fuego, 

whose  impenetrably  forested  slopes  rise  directly  from  the  sea, 
with  only  here  and  there  a  scanty  stretch  of  stony  beach,  the 
natives  of  the  southern  and  western  coasts  keep  close  to  the 
shore.  The  straits  and  channels  yield  them  all  their  food, 
and  are  the  highways  for  all  their  restless,  hungry  wander- 
ings.8 The  steep  slopes  and  dense  forests  preclude  travel  by 
land,  and  force  the  wretched  inhabitants  to  live  as  much  in 
their  canoes  as  in  their  huts.  The  Tlingit  and  Haida  In- 
dians of  the  mountainous  coast  of  southern  Alaska  locate 
their  villages  on  some  smooth  sheltered  beach,  with  their 
houses  in  a  single  row  facing  the  water,  and  the  ever-ready 
canoe  drawn  up  on  shore  in  front.  They  select  their  sites 
with  a  view  to  food  supply,  and  to  protection  in  case  of  at- 
tack. On  the  treeless  shores  of  Kadiak  Island  and  of  the  long 
narrow  Alaska  Peninsula  near  by,  the  Eskimo  choose  their 
village  location  for  an  accumulation  of  driftwood,  for  prox- 
imity to  their  food  supply,  and  a  landing-place  for  their 
kayaks  and  bidarkas.  Hence  they  prefer  a  point  of  land  or 
gravel  spit  extending  out  into  the  sea,  or  a  sand  reef  M-JI.-I- 
rating  a  salt-water  lagoon  from  the  open  sea.  The  Aleutian 
Islanders  regard  only  accessibility  to  the  shell-fish  on  the 
beach  and  their  pelagic  hunting  and  fishing;  and  this  consid- 
eration has  influenced  the  Eskimo  tribes  of  the  wide  Kus- 
kokwin  estuary  to  such  an  extent,  that  they  place  their  huts 
only  a  few  feet  above  ordinary  high  tide,  where  they  are 
constantly  exposed  to  overflow  from  the  sea.10  Only  among 


COAST  PEOPLES  249 

the  great  tidal  channels  of  the  Yukon  delta  are  they  dis- 
tributed over  the  whole  wide  coastal  zone,  even  to  its  inner 
edge. 

The  coast  Chukches  of  northeastern  Siberia  locate  their 
tent  villages  on  the  sand  ramparts  between  the  Arctic  Ocean 
and  the  freshwater  lagoons  which  line  this  low  tundra  shore. 
Here  they  are  conveniently  situated  for  fishing  and  hunting 
marine  animals,  while  protected  against  the  summer  inunda- 
tions of  the  Arctic  rivers.11  The  whole  western  side  of  Green- 
land, from  far  northern  Upernivik  south  to  Cape  Farewell, 
shows  both  Eskimo  and  Danish  settlements  almost  without 
exception  on  projecting  points  of  peninsulas  or  islands,  where 
the  stronger  effect  of  the  warm  ocean  current,  as  well  as 
proximity  to  the  food  supply,  serve  to  fix  their  habitations; 
although  the  remains  of  the  old  Norse  settlements  in  general 
are  found  in  sheltered  valleys  with  summer  vegetation,  strik- 
ing off  from  the  fiords  some  20  miles  back  from  the  outer 
coast.12  Caesar  found  that  the  ancient  Veneti,  an  immigrant 
people  of  the  southern  coast  of  Brittany,  built  their  towns 
on  the  points  of  capes  and  promontories,  sites  which  gave 
them  ready  contact  with  the  sea  and  protection  against  attack 
from  the  land  side,  because  every  rise  of  the  tide  submerged 
the  intervening  lowlands.13  Here  a  sterile  plateau  hinter- 
land drove  them  for  part  of  their  subsistence  to  the  water, 
and  the  continuous  intertribal  warfare  of  small  primitive 
states  to  the  sea-girt  asylums  of  the  capes. 

In  the  early  history  of  navigation  and  exploration,  strik-  Outer  edge 
ing   features   of  this   outer   coast   edge,   like   headlands   and  "* early 
capes,  became  important   sea   marks.      The  promontory   of  naviSation- 
Mount  Athos,  rising  6,400  feet  above  the  sea  between  the 
Hellespont  and  the  Thessalian  coast,  and  casting  its  shadow 
as  far  as  the  market-place  of  Lemnos,  was  a  guiding  point 
for  mariners  in  the  whole  northern  Aegean.14    For  the  ancient 
Greeks  Cape  Malia  was  long  the  boundary  stone  to  the  un- 
known wastes  of  the  western   Mediterranean,  just   as  later 
the  Pillars  of  Hercules  marked  the  portals  to  the  mare  tene- 
brosum  of  the  stormy  Atlantic.     So  the  Sacred  Promontory 
(Cape    St.    Vincent)    of   the   Iberian    Peninsula    defined    for 
Greeks  and  Romans  the  southwestern  limit  of  the  habitable 


250 


COAST  PEOPLES 


Outer  edge 

and 

piracy. 


world.15  Centuries  later  the  Portuguese  marked  their  advance 
down  the  west  coast  of  Africa,  first  by  Cape  Non,  which  so 
long  said  "No !"  to  the  struggling  mariner,  then  by  Cape 
Bojador,  and  finally  by  Cape  Verde. 

In  coastwise  navigation,  minor  headlands  and  inshore 
islands  were  points  to  steer  by ;  and  in  that  early  maritime 
colonization,  which  had  chiefly  a  commercial  aim,  they 
formed  the  favorite  spots  for  trading  stations.  The  Phoeni- 
cians in  their  home  country  fixed  their  settlements  by  prefer- 
ence on  small  capes,  like  Sidon  and  Berytus,  or  on  inshore 
islets,  like  Tyre  and  Aradus,16  and  for  their  colonies  and  trad- 
ing stations  they  chose  similar  sites,  whether  on  the  coast  of 
Sicily,17  Spain,  or  Morocco.18  Carthage  was  located  on  a 
small  hill-crowned  cape  projecting  out  into  the  Bay  of  Car- 
thage. The  two  promontories  embracing  this  inlet  were 
edged  with  settlements,  especially  the  northern  arm,  which 
held  Utica  and  Hippo,19  the  latter  on  the  site  of  the  modern 
French  naval  station  of  Bizerta. 

In  this  early  Hellenic  world,  when  Greek  sea-power  was  in 
its  infancy,  owing  to  the  fear  of  piracy,  cities  were  placed 
a  few  miles  back  from  the  coast;  but  with  the  partial  cessa- 
tion of  this  evil,  sites  on  shore  and  peninsula  were  preferred 
as  being  more  accessible  to  commerce,20  and  such  of  the  older 
towns  as  were  in  comparatively  easy  reach  of  the  seaboard 
established  there  each  its  own  port.  Thus  we  find  the  ancient 
urban  pairs  of  Argos  and  Nauplia,  Troezene  and  Pogon, 
Mycenae  and  Eiones,  Corinth  commanding  its  Aegean  port 
of  Cenchreae  8  miles  away  on  the  Saronic  Gulf  to  catch  the 
Asiatic  trade,  and  connected  by  a  walled  thoroughfare  a  mile 
and  a  half  long  with  Lechaeum,  a  second  harbor  on  the  Cor- 
inthian Gulf  which  served  the  Italian  commerce.21  In  the  same 
group  belonged  Athens  and  its  Pirams,  Megara  and  Pega1, 
Pergamus  and  Elaa?  in  western  Asia  Minor.22  These  ancient 
twin  cities  may  be  taken  to  mark  the  two  borders  of  the  const 
zone.  Like  the  modern  ones  which  we  have  considered  above, 
their  historical  development  has  shown  an  advance  from  the 
inner  toward  the  outer  edge,  though  owing  to  different 
causes.  However,  the  retired  location  of  the  Baltic  and  North 
Sea  towns  of  Germany  served  as  a  partial  protection  against 


COAST  PEOPLES 


251 


252 


COAST  PEOPLES 


Outer  edge 
in  coloni- 
zation. 


the  pirates  who,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  scoured  these  coa  f~. 
Lubeck,  originally  located  nearer  the  sea  than  at  present, 
and  frequently  demolished  by  them,  was  finally  rebuilt  far- 
ther inland  up  the  Trave  River.24     Later  the  port  of  Trave- 
miinde  grew  up  at  the  mouth  of  the  little  estuary. 

The  early  history  of  maritime  colonization  shows  in  gen- 
eral two  geographic  phases:  first,  the  appropriation  of  the 
islet  and  headland  outskirts  of  the  seaboard,  and  later — it 
may  be  much  later — an  advance  toward  the  inner  edge  of 
the  coast,  or  yet  farther  into  the  interior.  Progress  from 
the  earlier  to  the  maturer  phase  depends  upon  the  social 
and  economic  development  of  the  colonizers,  as  reflected  in 
their  valuation  of  territorial  area.  The  first  phase,  the  out- 
come of  a  low  estimate  of  the  value  of  land,  is  best  represented 
by  the  Phoenician  and  earliest  Greek  colonies,  whose  pur- 
poses were  chiefly  commercial,  and  who  sought  merely  such 
readily  accessible  coastal  points  as  furnished  the  best  trading 
stations  on  the  highway  of  the  Mediterranean  and  the  ad- 
jacent seas.  The  earlier  Greek  colonies,  like  those  of  the 
Triopium  promontory  forming  the  south-western  angle  of 
Asia  Minor,  Chalcidice,  the  Thracian  Chersonesus,  Calche- 
don,  Byzantium,  the  Pontic  Heraclea,  and  Sinope,  were  situ- 
ated on  peninsulas  or  headlands,  that  would  afford  a  con- 
venient anchor  ground ;  or,  like  Syracuse  and  Mitylene,  on 
small  inshore  islets,  which  were  soon  outgrown,  and  from 
which  the  towns  then  spread  to  the  mainland  near  by.  The 
advantages  of  such  sites  lay  in  their  accessibility  to  com- 
merce, and  in  their  natural  protection  against  the  attack  of 
strange  or  hostile  mainland  tribes.  For  a  nation  of  mer- 
chants, satisfied  with  the  large  returns  but  also  with  the  eph- 
emeral power  of  middlemen,  these  considerations  sufficed. 
While  the  Phrenician  trading  posts  in  Africa  dotted  the  outer 
rim  of  the  coast,  the  inner  edge  of  the  zone  was  indicated  by 
Libyan  or  Ethiopian  towns,  where  the  inhabitants  of  the  in- 
terior bartered  their  ivory  and  skins  for  the  products  of 
Tyre.25  So  that  commercial  expansion  of  the  Arabs  down 
the  east  coast  of  Africa  in  the  first  and  again  in  the  tenth 
century  seized  upon  the  offshore  islands  of  Zanzibar,  Pemba, 
and  Mafia,  the  small  inshore  islets  like  Mombasa  and  Lamu, 


COAST  PEOPLES  253 

and  the  whole  outer  rim  of  the  coast  from  the  equator  south- 
ward to  the  Rovuma  River.20  The  Sultan  of  Zanzibar,  heir 
to  this  coastal  strip,  had  not  expanded  it  a  decade  ago,  when 
he  had  to  relinquish  the  long  thread  of  his  continental  pos- 
sessions. 

But  when  a  people  has  advanced  to  a  higher  conception  Inland  ad- 
of  colonization  as  an  outlet  for  national  as  well  as  commer-  Vance  °* 
cial  expansion,  and  when  it  sees  that  the  permanent  prosper- 
ity of  both  race  and  trade  in  the  new  locality  depends  upon 
the  occupation  of  larger  tracts  of  territory  and  the  develop- 
ment of  local  resources  as  a  basis  for  exchanges,  their  settle- 
ments spread  from  the  outer  rim  of  the  coasts  to  its  inner 
edge  and  yet  beyond,  if  alluvial  plains  and  river  highways 
are  present  to  tempt  inland  expansion.  Such  was  the  history 
of  many  later  colonies  of  the  Greeks27  and  Carthaginians, 
and  especially  of  most  modern  colonial  movements,  for  these 
have  been  dominated  by  a  higher  estimate  of  the  value  of 
land. 

After  the  long  Atlantic  journey,  the  outposts  of  the  Amer- 
ican coast  were  welcome  resting-places  to  the  early  European 
voyagers,  but,  owing  to  their  restricted  area  and  therefore 
limited  productivity,  they  were  soon  abandoned,  or  became 
mere  bases  for  inland  expansion.  The  little  island  of  Cutty- 
hunk,  off  southern  Massachusetts,  was  the  site  of  Gosnold's 
abortive  attempt  at  colonization  in  1602,  like  Raleigh's 
attempt  on  Roanoke  Island  in  1585,  and  the  later  one  of  Pop- 
ham  on  the  eastern  headland  of  Casco  Bay.  The  Pilgrims 
paused  at  the  extremity  of  Cape  Cod,  and  again  on  Clark's 
Island,  before  fixing  their  settlement  on  Plymouth  Bay.  Mon- 
hegan  Island,  off  the  Maine  coast,  was  the  site  of  an  early 
English  trading  post,  which,  however,  lasted  only  from  1623 
to  1626  ;2S  and  the  same  dates  fix  the  beginning  and  end  of  a 
fishing  and  trading  station  established  on  Cape  Ann,  and  re- 
moved later  to  Salem  harbor.  The  Swedes  made  their  first 
settlement  in  America  on  Cape  Henlopen,  at  the  entrance  of 
Delaware  Bay ;  but  their  next,  only  seven  years  later,  they 
located  well  up  the  estuary  of  the  Delaware  River.  Thus  for 
the  modern  colonist  the  outer  edge  of  the  coast  is  merely 
the  gateway  of  the  land.  From  it  he  passes  rapidly  to  the 


25-4  COAST  PEOPLES 

settlement  of  the  interior,  wherever  fertile  soil  and  abundant 
resources  promise  a  due  return  upon  his  labor. 

Interpene-  Since  it  is  from  the  land,  as  the  inhabited  portion  of  the 

tration  of  earth's  surface,  that  all  maritime  movements  emanate,  and 
land  and  ^o  j-ne  land  that  all  oversea  migrations  are  directed,  the  re- 
ciprocal relations  between  land  and  sea  are  largely  deter- 
mined by  the  decree  of  accessibility  existing  between  the  two. 
This  depends  primarily  upon  the  articulation  of  a  land-mass, 
whether  it  presents  an  unbroken  contour  like  Africa  and  In- 
dia, or  whether,  like  Europe  and  Norway,  it  drops  a  fringe 
of  peninsulas  and  a  shower  of  islands  into  the  bordering 
ocean.  Mere  distance  from  the  sea  bars  a  country  from  its 
vivifying  contact ;  every  protrusion  of  an  ocean  artery  into 
the  heart  of  a  continent  makes  that  heart  feel  the  pulse  of 
life  on  far-off,  unseen  shores.  The  Baltic  inlet  which  makes 
a  seaport  of  St.  Petersburg  800  miles  (1,300  kilometers) 
back  from  the  western  rim  of  Europe,  brings  Atlantic  civiliza- 
tion to  this  half-Asiatic  side  of  the  continent.  The  solid 
front  presented  by  the  Iberian  Peninsula  and  Africa  to  the 
Atlantic  has  a  narrow  crack  at  Gibraltar,  whence  the  Medi- 
terranean penetrates  inland  2,300  miles  (3,700  kilometers), 
and  converts  the  western  foot  of  the  Caucasus  and  the  roots 
of  the  Lebanon  Mountains  into  a  seaboard.  By  means  of  the 
Arabian  Sea,  the  Indian  Ocean  runs  northward  1,300  miles 
(2,200  kilometers)  from  Cape  Comorin  to  meet  the  Indus 
delta ;  and  then  turns  westward  700  miles  farther  through 
the  Oman  and  Persian  gulfs  to  receive  the  boats  from  the 
Tigris  and  Euphrates.  Such  marine  inlets  create  islands 
and  peninsulas,  which  are  characterized  by  proximity  to  the 
sea  on  all  or  many  sides ;  and  in  the  interior  of  the  continents 
they  produce  every  degree  of  nearness,  shading  off  into  inac- 
cessible remoteness  from  the  watery  highway  of  the  deep. 

The  success  with  which  such  indentations  open  up  the  in- 
terior of  the  continents  depends  upon  the  length  of  the  inlets 
and  the  size  of  the  land-mass  in  question.  Africa's  huge  area 
and  unbroken  contour  combine  to  hold  the  sea  at  arm's 
length,  Europe's  deep-running  inlets  open  that  small  contin- 
ent so  effectively  that  Kazan,  Russia's  most  eastern  city  of 
considerable  size,  is  only  750  miles  (1,200  kilometers)  distant 


COAST  PEOPLES  255 

from  the  nearest  White  Sea,  Baltic,  and  Azof  ports.  Asia, 
the  largest  of  all  the  continents,  despite  a  succession  of  big 
indentations  that  invade  its  periphery  from  Sinai  peninsula 
to  East  Cape,  has  a  vast  inland  area  hopelessly  far  from  the 
surrounding  oceans. 

In  order  to  determine  the  coast  articulation  of  any  coun-  Ratio  of 
try  or  continent,  Carl  Ritter  and  his  followers  divided  area  shoreline 
by  shoreline,  the  latter  a  purely  mathematical  line  represent-   c 
ing  the  total  contour  length.     By  this  method  Europe's  ratio 
is  one  linear  mile  of  coast  to  174  square  miles  of  area,  Aus- 
tralia's 1 :  224,  Asia's  1 ;  490,  and  Africa's  1 :  700.  This  means 
that  Europe's  proportion  of  coast  is  three  times  that  of  Asia 
and  four  times  that  of  Africa;  that  a  country  like  Norway, 
with  a  shoreline  of  12,000  miles  traced  in  and  out  along  the 
fiords  and  around  the  larger  islands,29  has  only  10  square 
miles  of  area  for  every  mile  of  seaboard,  while  Germany,  with 
every  detail  of  its  littoral  included  in  the  measurement,  has 
only  1,515  miles  of  shoreline  and  a  ratio  of  one  mile  of  coast 
to  every  159  square  miles  of  area. 

The  criticism  has  been  made  against  this  method  that  it 
compares  two  unlike  measures,  square  and  linear,  which  more- 
over increase  or  decrease  in  markedly  different  degrees,  ac- 
cording as  larger  or  smaller  units  are  used.  But  for  the  pur- 
poses of  anthropo-geography  the  method  is  valid,  inasmuch 
as  it  shows  the  amount  of  area  dependent  for  its  marine  out- 
line upon  each  mile  of  littoral,  A  coast,  like  every  other 
boundary,  performs  the  important  function  of  intermediary 
in  the  intercourse  of  a  land  with  its  neighbors ;  hence  the 
length  of  this  sea  boundary  materially  affects  this  function. 
Area  and  coastline  are  not  dead  mathematical  quantities, 
but  like  organs  of  one  body  stand  in  close  reciprocal  activ- 
ity, and  can  be  understood  only  in  the  light  of  their 
persistent  mutual  relations.  The  division  of  the  area  of  a 
land  by  the  length  of  its  coastline  yields  a  quotient  which  to 
the  anthropo-geographer  is  not  a  dry  figure,  but  an  index  to 
the  possible  relations  between  seaboard  and  interior.  A 
comparison  of  some  of  these  ratios  will  illustrate  this  fact. 

Germany's  shoreline,  traced  in  contour  without  including 
details,  measures  787  miles;  this  is  just  one-fifth  that  of 


256 


COAST  PEOPLES 


Criticism 
of  this 

ormula. 


Accessi- 
oility  of 
coasts  from 
hinterland. 


Italy  and  two-fifths  that  of  France,  so  that  it  is  short.  But 
since  Germany's  area  is  nearly  twice  Italy's  and  a  little  lar- 
ger than  that  of  France,  it  has  267  square  miles  of  territory 
for  every  mile  of  coast,  while  Italy  has  only  28  square  miles, 
and  France  106.  Germany  has  towns  that  are  434  miles 
from  the  nearest  seaboard,  but  in  Italy  the  most  inland  point 
is  only  148  miles  from  the  Mediterranean.30  If  we  turn  now 
to  the  United  States  and  adopt  Mendenhall's  estimate  of  its 
general  or  contour  coastline  as  5,705  miles,  we  find  that  our 
country  has  530  square  miles  of  area  dependent  for  its  out- 
let upon  each  mile  of  seaboard.  This  means  that  our  coast 
has  a  heavy  task  imposed  upon  it,  and  that  its  commercial 
and  political  importance  is  correspondingly  enhanced;  that 
the  extension  of  our  Gulf  of  Mexico  littoral  by  the  purchase 
of  Florida  and  the  annexation  of  Texas  were  measures  of 
self-preservation,  and  that  the  unbroken  contour  and  moun- 
tain-walled face  of  our  Pacific  littoral  is  a  serious  national 
handicap. 

But  this  method  is  open  to  the  legitimate  and  fundamental 
criticism  that,  starting  from  the  conception  of  a  coast  as  a 
mere  line  instead  of  a  zone,  it  ignores  all  those  features 
which  belong  to  every  littoral  as  a  strip  of  the  earth's  sur- 
face— location,  geologic  structure,  relief,  area,  accessibility 
to  the  sea  in  front  and  to  the  land  behind,  all  which  vary 
from  one  part  of  the  world's  seaboard  to  another,  and  serve 
to  differentiate  the  human  history  of  every  littoral.  More- 
over, of  all  parts  of  the  earth's  surface,  the  coast  as  the  hem 
of  the  sea  and  land,  combining  the  characters  of  each,  is 
most  complex.  It  is  the  coast  as  a  human  habitat  that  pri- 
marily concerns  anthropo-geography.  A  careful  analy.Ms 
of  the  multifarious  influences  modifying  one  another  in  this 
mingled  environment  of  land  and  water  reveals  an  intricate 
interplay  of  geographic  forces,  varying  from  inland  basin  to 
marginal  sea,  from  marginal  sea  to  open  ocean,  and  changing 
from  one  historical  period  to  another — an  interplay  so  mer- 
curial that  it  could  find  only  a  most  inadequate  expression 
in  the  rigid  mathematical  formula  of  Carl  Ritter. 

As  the  coast,  then,  is  the  border  zone  between  the  solid, 
inhabited  land  and  the  mobile,  untenanted  deep,  two  impor- 


COAST  PEOPLES  257 

tant  factors  in  its  history  are  the  accessibility  of  its  back 
country  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  accessibility  of  the  sea  on 
the  other.  A  littoral  population  barred  from  its  hinterland  by 
mountain  range  or  steep  plateau  escarpment  or  desert  tract 
feels  little  influence  from  the  land;  level  or  fertile  soil  is  too' 
limited  in  amount  to  draw  inland  the  growing  people,  inter- 
course is  too  difficult  and  infrequent,  transportation  too  slow1 
and  costly.  Hence  the  inhabitants  of  such  a  coast  are  forced 
to  look  seaward  for  their  racial  and  commercial  expansion, 
even  if  a  paucity  of  good  harbors  limits  the  accessibility  of 
the  sea ;  they  must  lead  a  somewhat  detached  and  independent 
existence,  so  far  as  the  territory  behind  them  is  concerned.  Here 
the  coast,  as  a  peripheral  organ  of  the  interior,  as  the  outlet 
for  its  products,  the  market  for  its  foreign  exchanges,  and 
the  medium  for  intercourse  with  its  maritime  neighbors,  sees 
its  special  function  impaired.  But  it  takes  advantage  of  its 
isolation  and  the  protection  of  a  long  sea  boundary  to  detach 
itself  politically  from  its  hinterland,  as  the  histories  of  Pho3- 
nicia,  the  Aegean  coast  of  Asia  Minor,  Dalmatia,  the  repub- 
lics of  Amain",  Venice,  and  Genoa,  the  county  of  Barcelona, 
and  Portugal  abundantly  prove.  At  the  same  time  it  profits 
by  its  seaboard  location  to  utilize  the  more  varied  fields  of 
maritime  enterprise  before  it,  in  lieu  of  the  more  or  less  for- 
bidden territory  behind  it.  The  height  and  width  of  the  land- 
ward barrier,  the  number  and  practicability  of  the  passways 
across  it,  and  especially  the  value  of  the  hinterland's  products 
in  relation  to  their  bulk,  determine  the  amount  of  intercourse 
between  that  hinterland  and  its  mountain  or  desert  barred 
littoral.  » 

The  interior  is  most  effectively  cut  off  from  the  periphery, 
where  a  mountain  range  or  a  plateau  escarpment  traces  the  Mountain- 
inner  line  of  the  coastland,  as  in  the  province  of  Liguria  in  barred 
northern    Italy,    Dalmatia,    the    western    or   Malabar    coast  hinterlands' 
of  India,  most  parts  of  Africa,  and  long  stretches  of  the 
Pacific  littoral  of  the  Americas.     The  highland  that  backs 
the  Norwegian  coast  is  crossed  by  only  one  railroad,  that 
passing  through  the  Trondhjem  depression;  and  this  barrier 
has  served  to  keep  Norway's  historical  connection  with  Swe- 
den far  less  intimate  than  with  Denmark.     The  long  inlet  of 


258  COAST  PEOPLES 

Ahe  Adriatic,  bringing  the  sea  well  into  the  heart  of  Southern 
Europe,  has  seen  nevertheless  a  relatively  small  maritime 
jlevelopment,  owing  to  the  wall  of  mountains  that  everywhere 
shuts  out  the  hinterland  of  its  coasts.  The  greatness  of  Ven- 
ice was  intimately  connected  with  the  Brenner  Pass  over  the 
Alps  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  trade  of  the  eastern  Mediter- 
ranean on  the  other.  Despite  Austro-Hungary's  crucial  in- 
terest in  the  northeast  corner  of  the  Adriatic  as  a  maritime 
outlet  for  this  vast  inland  empire,  and  its  herculean  efforts 
at  Trieste  and  Fiume  to  create  harbors  and  to  connect  them 
by  transmontane  railroads  with  the  valley  of  the  Danube,  the 
maritime  development  of  this  coast  is  still  restricted,  and  much 
of  Austria's  trade  goes  out  northward  by  German  ports.31 
Farther  south  along  the  Dalmatian  and  Albanian  coasts,  the 
deep  and  sheltered  bays  between  the  half-submerged  roots  of 
the  Dinaric  Alps  have  developed  only  local  importance,  be- 
cause they  lack  practicable  connection  with  the  interior. 
This  was  their  history  too  in  early  Greek  and  Roman  days, 
for  they  found  only  scant  support  in  the  few  caravans  that 
~i&  crossed  by  the  Roman  road  to  Dyrrachium  to  exchange  the 
merchandise  of  the  Aegean  for  the  products  of  the  Ionian 
Isles.  Spain  has  always  suffered  from  the  fact  that  her  bare, 
arid,  and  unproductive  tableland  almost  everywhere  rises 
steeply  from  her  fertile  and  densely  populated  coasts ;  and 
therefore  that  the  two  have  been  unable  to  cooperate  either 
for  the  production  of  a  large  maritime  commerce  or  for 
national  political  unity.  Here  the  diverse  conditions  of  the 
littoral  and  the  wall  of  the  great  central  terrace  of  the  coun- 
try have  emphasized  that  tendency  to  defection  that  belongs 
to  every  periphery,  and  therefore  necessitated  a  strong  cen- 
tralized government  to  consolidate  the  restive  maritime  prov- 
inces with  their  diverse  Galician,  Basque,  Catalonian,  and 
Andalusian  folk  into  one  nation  with  the  Castilians  of  the 
plateau.32 

Accessible  Where  mountain  systems  run  out  endwise  into  the  sea,  the 

hinterlands,   longitudinal  valleys  with  their  drainage  streams  open  natural 

highways  from  the  interior  to  the  coast.     This  structure  has 

made  the  Atlantic   side  of   the   Iberian   Peninsula   far   more 

open  than  its  Mediterranean  front,  and  therefore  contributed 


COAST  PEOPLES  259 

to  its  leadership  in  maritime  affairs  since  1450.  So  from 
the  shores  of  Thrace  to  the  southern  point  of  the  Pelopon- 
nesus, all  the  valleys  of  Greece  open  out  on  the  eastern  or 
Asiatic  side.  Here  every  mountain-flanked  bay  has  had  its 
own  small  hinterland  to  draw  upon,  and  every  such  interior 
has  been  accessible  to  the  civilization  of  the  Aegean ;  here 
was  concentrated  the  maritime  and  cultural  life  of  Hellas.33 
The  northern  half  of  Andean  Colombia,  by  way  of  the  par- 
allel Atrato,  Rio  Cauco,  and  Magdalena  valleys,  has  sup- 
ported the  activities  of  its  Caribbean  littoral,  and  through 
these  avenues  has  received  such  foreign  influences  as  might 
penetrate  to  inland  Bogota.  In  like  manner,  the  mountain- 
ridged  peninsula  of  Farther  India  keeps  its  interior  in  touch 
with  its  leading  ports  through  its  intermontane  valleys  of  the 
Irawadi,  Salwin,  Menam,  and  Mekong  rivers. 

Low  coasts  rising  by  easy  gradients  to  wide  plains,  like 
those  of  northern  France,  Germany,  southern  Russia,  and 
the  Gulf  seaboard  of  the  United  States,  profit  by  an  accessi- 
ble and  extensive  hinterland.  Occasionally,  however,  this 
advantage  is  curtailed  by  a  political  boundary  reinforced 
by  a  high  protective  tariff,  as  Holland,  Belgium,  and  East 
Prussia34  know  to  their  sorrow. 

These  low  hems  of  the  land,  however,  often  meet  physical 
obstructions  to  ready  communications  with  the  interior  in 
the  silted  inlets,  shallow  lagoons,  marshes,  or  mangrove 
swamps  of  the  littoral  itself.  Here  the  larger  drainage 
streams  give  access  across  this  amphibian  belt  to  the  solid 
land  behind.  Where  they  flow  into  a  tide-swept  bay  like  the 
North  Sea  or  the  English  Channel,  they  scour  out  their  beds 
and  preserve  the  connection  between  sea  and  land;35  but  de- 
bouchment into  a  tideless  basin  like  the  Caspian  or  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico,  even  for  such  mighty  streams  as  the  Volga  and  the 
Mississippi,  sees  the  slow  silting  up  of  their  mouths  and  the 
restriction  of  their  agency  in  opening  up  the  hinterland. 
Thus  the  character  of  the  bordering  sea  may  help  to  deter- 
mine the  accessibility  of  the  coast  from  the  land  side.  Accessi- 

Its  accessibility  from  the  sea  depends  primarily  upon  its 
degree  of  articulation ;  and  this  articulation  depends  upon  from  ^ 
whether  the  littoral  belt  has  suffered  elevation  or  subsidence,  sea. 


260  COAST  PEOPLES 

When  the  inshore  sea  rests  upon  an  upliftt-  :  bottom,  the  con- 
tour of  the  coast  is  smooth  and  unbroken,  because  most  of 
the  irregularities  of  surface  have  been  overlaid  by  a  deposit 
of  waste  from  the  land ;  so  it  offers  no  harbor  except  here  and 
there  a  silted  river  mouth,  while  it  shelves  off  through  a  broad 
amphibian  belt  of  tidal  marsh,  lagoon,  and  sand  reef  to  a 
shallow  sea.  Such  is  the  coast  of  New  Jersey,  most  of  the 
Gulf  seaboard  of  the  United  States  and  Mexico,  the  Coro- 
mandel  coast  of  India,  and  the  long,  low  littoral  of  Upper 
Guinea.  Such  coasts  harbor  a  population  of  fishermen  liv- 
ing along  the  strands  of  their  placid  lagoons,36  and  stimulate 
a  timid  inshore  navigation  which  sometimes  develops  to  ex- 
tensive coastwise  intercourse,  where  a  network  of  lagoons 
and  deltaic  channels  forms  a  long  inshore  passage,  as  in  Up- 
per Guinea,  but  which  fears  the  break  of  the  surf  outside.87 
The  rivers  draining  these  low  uplifted  lands  are  deflected 
from  their  straight  path  to  the  sea  by  coastwise  deposits,  and 
idly  trail  along  for  miles  just  inside  the  outer  beach;  or  they 
are  split  up  into  numerous  offshoots  among  the  silt  beds  of  a 
delta,  to  find  their  way  by  shallow,  tortuous  channels  to  the 
ocean,  so  that  they  abate  their  value  as  highways  between 
sea  and  land.  The  silted  mouths  of  the  Nile  excluded  the 
larger  vessels  even  of  Augustus  Caesar's  time  and  admitted 
only  their  lighters,38  just  as  to-day  the  lower  Rufigi  River 
loses  much  of  its  value  to  German  East  Africa  because  of  its 
scant  hospitality  to  vessels  coming  from  the  sea. 

Embayed  The  effect  of  subsidence,  even  on  a  low  coastal  plain,  is  to 

increase  accessibility  from  the  sea  by  flooding  the  previous 
river  valleys  and  transforming  them  into  a  succession  of  long 
shallow  inlets,  alternating  with  low  or  hilly  tongues  of  land. 
Such  embayed  coasts  form  our  Atlantic  seaboard  from  Dela- 
ware Bay,  through  Chesapeake  Bay  to  Pamlico  Sound,  the 
North  Sea  face  of  England,  the  funnel-shaped  "forden"  or 
firths  on  the  eastern  side  of  Jutland  and  Schleswig-Holstein, 
and  the  ragged  sounds  or  "Bodden"  that  indent  the  Baltic 
shore  of  Germany  from  the  Bay  of  Lubeck  to  the  mouth  of 
the  Oder  River.39  Although  the  shallowness  of  the  bordering 
sea  and  the  sand-bars  and  sand  reefs  which  characterize  all 
flat  coasts  here  also  exclude  the  largest  vessels,  such  coasts 


COAST  PEOPLES  261 

have  nevertheless  ample  contact  with  both  land  and  sea. 
They  tend  to  develop,  therefore,  the  activities  appropriate 
to  both.  A  fertile  soil  and  abundant  local  resources,  as  in 
tidewater  Maryland  and  Virginia,  make  the  land  more  at- 
tractive than  the  sea;  the  inhabitants  become  farmers  rather 
than  sailors.  On  the  other  hand,  an  embayed  coastland 
promising  little  return  to  the  labor  of  tillage,  but  with  abun- 
dant fisheries  and  a  superior  location  for  maritime  trade,  is 
sure  to  profit  by  the  accessible  sea,  and  achieve  the  predom- 
inant maritime  activity  which  characterized  the  mediaeval 
Hanse  Towns  of  northern  Germany  and  colonial  New 
England. 

Subsidence  that  brings  the  beat  of  the  surf  against  the  Maritime 
bolder  reliefs  of  the  land  produces  a  ragged,  indented  coast,  activity 
deep-water  inlets  penetrating  far  into  the  country,  hilly  or  on  8t< 
mountainous  tongues  of  land  running  far  out  into  the  sea  coasts 
and  breaking  up  into  a  swarm  of  islands  and  rocks,  whose 
outer  limits  indicate  approximately  the  old  prediluvial  line 
of  shore.40  Such  are  the  fiord  regions  of  Norway,  southern 
Alaska,  British  Columbia,  Greenland,  and  southern  Chile ; 
the  Rias  or  submerged  river  valley  coast  of  northwestern 
Spain ;  and  the  deeply  sunken  mountain  flank  of  Dalmatia, 
whose  every  lateral  valley  has  become  a  bay  or  a  strait  be- 
tween mainland  and  island.  All  these  coasts  are  character- 
ized by  a  close  succession  of  inlets,  a  limited  amount  of  level 
country  for  settlement  or  cultivation,  and  in  their  rear  a 
steep  slope  impeding  communication  with  their  hinterland. 
Inaccessibility  from  the  land,  a  high  degree  of  accessibility 
from  the  sea,  and  a  paucity  of  local  resources  unite  to 
thrust  the  inhabitants  of  such  coasts  out  upon  the  deep,  to 
make  of  them  fishermen,  seamen,  and  ocean  carriers.  The 
same  result  follows  where  no  barrier  on  the  land  side  exists, 
but  where  a  granitic  or  glaciated  soil  in  the  interior  discour- 
ages agriculture  and  landward  expansion,  as  in  Brittany, 
Maine,  and  Newfoundland.  In  all  these  the  land  repels  and 
the  sea  attracts.  Brittany  furnishes  one-fifth  of  all  the  sail- 
ors in  France's  merchant  marine,41  and  its  pelagic  fishermen 
sweep  the  seas  from  Newfoundland  to  Iceland.  Three-fifths 
of  the  maritime  activity  of  the  whole  Austrian  Empire  is 


262  COAST  PEOPLES 

confined  to  the  ragged  coast  of  Dalrnatia,  which  Annabel 
to-day  most  of  the  sailors  for  the  imperial  marine,  just  as  in 
Roman  days  it  manned  the  Adriatic  fleet  of  the  Caesars.42 
The  Haida,  Tsimshean,  and  Tlingit  Indians  of  the  ragged 
western  coast  of  British  Columbia  and  southern  Alaska 
spread  their  villages  on  the  narrow  tide-swept  hem  of  the 
land,  and  subsist  chiefly  by  the  generosity  of  the  deep.  They 
are  poor  landsmen,  but  excellent  boat-makers  and  seamen, 
venturing  sometimes  twenty-five  miles  out  to  sea  to  gather 
birds'  eggs  from  the  outermost  fringe  of  rocks. 

Contrasted  As  areas  of  elevation  or  subsidence  are,  as  a  rule,  exten- 

coastal  sive,  it  follows  that  coasts  usually  present  long  stretches  of 

smooth  simple  shoreline,  or  a  long  succession  of  alternating 
inlet  and  headland.  Therefore  different  littoral  belts  show 
marked  contrasts  in  their  degree  of  accessibility  to  the  sea, 
and  their  harbors  appear  in  extensive  groups  of  one  type — 
fiords,  river  estuaries,  sand  or  coral  reef  lagoons,  and  em- 
bayed mountain  roots.  A  sudden  change  in  relief  or  in  geo- 
logic history  sees  one  of  these  types  immediately  succeeded 
by  a  long-drawn  group  of  a  different  type.  Such  a  contrast 
is  found  between  the  Baltic  and  North  Sea  ports  of  Denmark 
and  Germany,  the  eastern  and  southern  seaboards  of  Eng- 
land, the  eastern  and  western  sides  of  Scotland,  and  the 
Pacific  littoral  of  North  America  north  and  south  of  Juan 
de  Fuca  Strait,  attended  by  a  contrasted  history. 

A  common  morphological  history,  marked  by  mountain 
uplift,  glaciation,  and  subsidence,  has  given  an  historical 
development  similar  in  not  a  few  respects  to  the  fiord  coasts 
of  New  England,  Norway,  Iceland,  Greenland,  the  Alaskan 
"panhandle,"  and  southern  Chile.  Large  subsidence  areas 
on  the  Mediterranean  coasts  from  the  Strait  of  Gibraltar  to 
the  Bosporus  have  in  essential  features  duplicated  each 
other's  histories,  just  as  the  low  infertile  shores  of  the  Baltic 
from  Finland  to  the  Skager  Rack  have  had  much  in  common 
in  their  past  development. 

Where,  however,  a  purely  local  subsidence,  as  in  Kamerun 
Bay  and  Old  Calabar  on  the  elsewhere  low  monotonous  stretch 
of  the  Upper  Guinea  coast,43  or  a  single  great  river  estu.-iry, 
as  in  the  La  Plata  and  the  Columbia,  affords  a  protected 


COAST  PEOPLES  263 

anchorage  on  an  otherwise  portless  shore,  such  inlets  assume 
increased  importance.  In  the  long  unbroken  reach  of  our 
Pacific  seaboard,  San  Francisco  Bay  and  the  Columbia  estu- 
ary are  of  inestimable  value;  while,  by  the  treaty  of  1848 
with  Mexico,  the  international  boundary  line  was  made  to 
bend  slightly  south  of  west  from  the  mouth  of  the  Gila  River 
to  the  coast,  in  order  to  include  in  the  United  States  terri- 
tory the  excellent  harbor  of  San  Diego.  The  mere  nicks  in 
the  rim  of  Southwest  Africa  constituting  Walfish  Bay  and 
Angra  Pequena  assume  considerable  value  as  trading  sta 
tions  and  places  of  refuge  along  that  1,200-mile  reach  of 
inhospitable  coast  extending  from  Cape  Town  north  to  Great 
Fish  Bay.44  It  is  worthy  of  notice  in  passing  that,  though 
both  of  these  small  inlets  lie  within  the  territory  of  German 
Southwest  Africa,  Walfish  Bay  with  20  miles  of  coast  on 
either  side  is  a  British  possession,  and  that  two  tiny  islets 
which  commands  the  entrance  to  the  harbor  of  Angra  Pequena, 
also  belong  to  Great  Britain.  On  the  uniform  coast  of  East 
Africa,  the  single  considerable  indentation  formed  by  Dela- 
goa  Bay  assumes  immense  importance,  which,  however,  is  due 
in  part  to  the  mineral  wealth  of  its  Transvaal  hinterland. 
From  this  point  northward  for  35  degrees  of  latitude,  a  river 
mouth,  like  that  fixing  the  site  of  Beira,  or  an  inshore  islet 
affording  protected  harborage,  like  that  of  Mombasa,  serves 
as  the  single  ocean  gateway  of  a  vast  territory,  and  forms 
the  terminus  of  a  railroad — proof  of  its  importance. 

The  maritime  evolution  of  all  amply  embayed  coasts,  ex-  Evolution 
cept  in  Arctic  and  sub-Arctic  regions  inimical  to  all  historical  of  ports, 
development,  shows  in  its  highest  stage  the  gradual  elimina- 
tion of  minor  ports,  and  the  concentration  of  maritime  activ- 
ity in  a  few  favored  ones,  which  have  the  deepest  and  most 
capacious  harbors  and  the  best  river,  canal,  or  railroad  con- 
nection with  the  interior.  The  earlier  stages  are  marked  by 
a  multiplicity  of  ports,  showing  in  general  activity  nearly 
similar  in  amount  and  in  kind.  England's  merchant  marine 
in  the  fourteenth  century  was  distributed  in  a  large  group  of 
small  but  important  ports  on  the  southern  coast,  all  which, 
owing  to  their  favorable  location,  were  engaged  in  the  French 
and  Flemish  trade;  and  in  another  group  on  the  east  coast, 


264  COAST  PEOPLES 

reaching  from  Hull  to  Colchester,  which  participated  in  the 
Flemish,  Norwegian,  and  Baltic  trade.45  Most  of  these  have 
now  declined  before  the  overpowering  competition  of  a  few 
such  seaboard  marts  as  London,  Hull,  and  Southampton. 
The  introduction  of  steam  trawlers  into  the  fishing  fleets  has 
in  like  manner  led  to  the  concentration  of  the  fishermen  in  a 
few  large  ports  with  good  railroad  facilities,  such  as  Aber- 
deen and  Grimsby,  while  the  fishing  villages  that  fringed  the 
whole  eastern  and  southern  coasts  have  been  gradually  de- 
populated.46 So  in  colonial  days,  when  New  England  was 
little  more  than  a  cordon  of  settlements  along  that  rock- 
bound  littoral,  almost  every  inlet  had  its  port  actively 
engaged  in  coastwise  and  foreign  commerce  in  the  West 
Indies  and  the  Guinea  Coast,  in  cod  and  mackerel  fisheries, 
in  whaling  and  shipbuilding,  and  this  with  only  slight  local 
variations.  This  widespread  homogeneity  of  maritime 
activity  has  been  succeeded  by  strict  localization  and  differ- 
entiation, and  reduction  from  many  to  few  ports.  So,  for 
the  whole  Atlantic  seaboard  of  the  United  States,  evolution 
of  seaports  has  been  marked  by  increase  of  size  attended  by 
decrease  of  numbers. 

Offshore  A  well  dissected  coast,  giving  ample  contact  with  the  sea, 

ul&ndB.  often  fails  nevertheless  to  achieve  historical  importance,  un- 

less outlying  islands  are  present  to  ease  the  transition  from 
inshore  to  pelagic  navigation,  and  to  tempt  to  wider  mari- 
time enterprise.  The  long  sweep  of  the  European  coast  from 
northern  Norway  to  Brittany  has  played  out  a  significant 
part  of  its  history  in  that  procession  of  islands  formed  by 
Iceland,  the  Faroes,  Shetland,  Orkneys,  Great  Britain,  Ire- 
land and  the  Channel  Isles,  whether  it  was  the  navigator  of 
ancient  Armorica  steering  his  leather-sailed  boat  to  the 
shores  of  Caesar's  Britain,  or  the  modern  Breton  fisherman 
pulling  in  his  nets  off  the  coasts  of  distant  Iceland.  The  dim 
outline  of  mountainous  Cyprus,  seen  against  a  far-away 
horizon  from  the  slopes  of  Lebanon,  beckoned  the  Phoenician 
ship-master  thither  to  trade  and  to  colonize,  just  as  the  early 
Etruscan  merchants  passed  from  their  busy  ironworks  on  the 
island  of  Elba  over  the  narrow  strait  to  visible  Corsica.47  It 
was  on  the  eastern  side  of  Greece,  with  its  deep  embayments, 


COAST  PEOPLES  265 

its  valleys  opening  out  to  the  Aegean,  with  its  483  islands 
scattered  thickly  as  stars  in  the  sky,  and  its  Milky  Way  of 
the  Cyclades  leading  to  the  deep,  rich  soils  of  the  Asia  Minor 
coast,  with  its  sea-made  contact  with  all  the  stimulating  in- 
fluences and  dangers  emanating  from  the  Asiatic  littoral, 
that  Hellenic  history  played  its  impressive  drama.  Here  was 
developed  the  spirit  of  enterprise  that  carried  colonies  to  far 
western  Sicily  and  Italy,  while  the  western  or  rear  side  had  a 
confined  succession  of  local  events,  scarce  worthy  the  name 
of  history.  Neither  mountain-walled  Epirus  nor  Corcyra 
had  an  Hellenic  settlement  in  735  B.  c.,  at  a  date  when  the 
eastern  Greeks  had  reached  the  Ionian  coast  of  the  Aegean 
and  had  set  up  a  lonely  group  of  colonies  even  on  the  Bay  of 
Naples.  Turning  to  America,  we  find  that  the  Antilles  re- 
ceived their  population  from  the  only  two  tribes,  first  the 
Arawaks  and  later  the  Caribs,  who  ever  reached  the  indented 
northern  coast  of  South  America  between  the  Isthmus  of 
Panama  and  the  mouth  of  the  Orinoco.  Here  the  small 
islands  of  the  Venezuelan  coast,  often  in  sight,  lured  these 
peoples  of  river  and  shore  to  open-sea  navigation,  and  drew 
them  first  to  the  Windward  Isles,  then  northward  step  by 
step  or  island  by  island,  to  Hayti  and  Cuba.48 

In  all  these  instances,  offshore  islands  tempt  to  expansion  Offshore 
and  thereby  add  to  the  historical  importance  of  the  near-by  i^^ds  as 
coast.     Frequently,  however,  they  achieve  the  same  result  by    ,        ' 
offering   advantageous    footholds   to   enterprising   voyagers  mainian(j. 
from  remote  lands,  and  become  the  medium  for  infusing  life 
into  hitherto  dead  coasts.     The  long  monotonous  littoral  of 
East  Africa  from  Cape  Guadafui  to  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope, 
before  the  planting  here  of  Portuguese  way-stations  on  the 
road  to  India  in  the  sixteenth  century,  was  destitute  of  his- 
torical significance,  except  that  stretch  opposite  the  islands 
of  Zanzibar  and  Pemba,  which  Arab  merchants  in  the  tenth 
century  appropriated  as  the  basis  for  their  slave  and  ivory 
trade.      The   East    Indies   and   Ceylon   have   been   so   many 
offshore    stations    whence,    first    through    the    Portuguese, 
and   later  through   the   Dutch   and   English,    European    in- 
fluences  percolated  into   southeastern   Asia.     Asia,  with   its 
island-strewn  shores,  has  diffused  its  influences  over  a  broad 


266 


COAST  PEOPLES 


Previous 
habitat  of 
coast- 
dwellers. 


zone  of  the  western  Pacific,  and  through  the  agency  of  its 
active  restless  Malays,  even  halfway  across  that  ocean.  In 
contrast,  the  western  coast  of  the  Americas,  a  stretch  nearly 
10,000  miles  from  Tierra  del  Fuego  to  the  Aleutian  chain, 
has  seen  its  aboriginal  inhabitants  barred  from  seaward  ex- 
pansion by  the  lack  of  offshore  islands,  and  its  entrance  upon 
the  historical  stage  delayed  till  recent  times. 

In  general  it  can  be  said  that  islandless  seas  attain  a  later 
historical  development  than  those  whose  expanse  is  rendered 
less  forbidding  by  hospitable  fragments  of  land.  This  fac- 
tor, as  well  as  its  location  remote  from  the  old  and  stimulat- 
ing civilization  of  Syria  and  Asia  Minor,  operated  to  retard 
the  development  of  the  western  Mediterranean  long  after  the 
eastern  basin  had  reached  its  zenith. 

Coast-dwelling  peoples  exhibit  every  degree  of  inti- 
macy with  the  water,  from  the  amphibian  life  of  many  Malay 
tribes  who  love  the  wash  of  the  waves  beneath  their  pile- 
built  villages,  to  the  Nama  Bushmen  who  inhabit  the  dune- 
walled  coast  of  Southwest  Africa,  and  know  nothing  of  the 
sea.  In  the  resulting  nautical  development  the  natural  tal- 
ents and  habits  of  the  people  are  of  immense  influence ;  but 
these  in  turn  have  been  largely  determined  by  the  geograph- 
ical environment  of  their  previous  habitat,  whether  inland  or 
coastal,  and  by  the  duration  in  time,  as  well  as  the  degree  and 
necessity,  of  their  contact  with  the  sea.  The  Phoenicians, 
who,  according  to  their  traditions  as  variously  interpreted, 
came  to  the  coast  of  Lebanon  either  from  the  Persian  Gulf 
or  the  Red  Sea,49  brought  to  their  favorable  maritime  location 
a  different  endowment  from  that  of  the  land-trading  Philis- 
tines, who  moved  up  from  the  south  to  occupy  the  sand- 
choked  shores  of  Palestine,50  or  from  that  of  the  Jews,  bred  to 
the  grasslands  of  Mesopotamia  and  the  gardens  of  Judea, 
who  only  at  rare  periods  in  their  history  forced  their  way  to 
the  sea.81  The  unindented  coast  stretching  from  Cape  Car- 
mel  south  to  the  Nile  delta  never  produced  a  maritime  people 
and  never  achieved  maritime  importance,  till  a  race  of  expe- 
rienced mariners  like  the  Greeks  planted  their  colonies  and 
built  their  harbor  moles  on  the  shores  of  Sharon  and  Philis- 
tia.62  So  on  the  west  face  of  Africa,  from  the  Senegal  south- 


COAST  PEOPLES  267 

ward  along  the  whole  Guinea  Coast  to  Benguela,  all  evidences 
of  kinship  and  tradition  among  the  local  tribes  point  to  an 
origin  on  the  interior  plains  and  a  recent  migration  sea- 
ward,53 so  that  no  previous  schooling  enabled  them  to  exploit 
the  numerous  harbors  along  this  littoral,  as  did  later  the  sea- 
bred  Portuguese  and  English. 

Not  only  the  accessibility  of  the  coast  from  the  sea,  but  Habitability 
also   its   habitability   enters   as   a   factor   into  its   historical  °*  coasts 

importance.     A  sandy  desert  coast,  like  that  of  Southwest  f 

.  .  .  m  maritime 

Africa  and  much  of  the  Peruvian  littoral,  or  a  sterile  moun-  development 

tain  face,  like  that  of  Lower  California,  excludes  the  people 
of  the  country  from  the  sea.  Saldanha  Bay,  the  one  good 
natural  harbor  on  the  west  coast  of  Cape  Colony,  is  worthless 
even  to  the  enterprising  English,  because  it  has  no  supply  of 
fresh  water.54  The  slowness  of  the  ancient  Egyptians  to  take 
the  short  step  forward  from  river  to  marine  navigation  can 
undoubtedly  be  traced  to  the  fact  that  the  sour  swamps, 
barren  sand-dunes,  and  pestilential  marshes  on  the  seaward 
side  of  the  Nile  delta  must  have  always  been  sparsely  popu- 
lated as  they  are  to-day,55  and  that  a  broad  stretch  of  sandy 
waste  formed  their  Red  Sea  littoral. 

On  the  other  hand,  where  the  hem  of  the  continents  is  fer- 
tile enough  to  support  a  dense  population,  a  large  number 
of  people  are  brought  into  contact  with  the  sea,  even  where 
no  elaborate  articulation  lengthens  the  shoreline.  When  this 
teeming  humanity  of  a  garden  littoral  is  barred  from  land- 
ward expansion  by  desert  or  mountain,  or  by  the  already 
overcrowded  population  of  its  own  hinterland,  it  wells  over 
the  brim  of  its  home  country,  no  matter  how  large,  and  over- 
flows to  other  lands  across  the  seas.  The  congested  popula- 
tion of  the  fertile  and  indented  coast  of  southern  China, 
though  not  strictly  speaking  a  sea-faring  people,  found  an 
outlet  for  their  redundant  humanity  and  their  commerce  in 
the  tropical  Sunda  Islands.  By  the  sixth  century  their  trad- 
ing junks  were  doing  an  active  business  in  the  harbors  of 
Java,  Sumatra,  and  Malacca ;  they  had  even  reached  Ceylon 
and  the  Persian  Gulf,  and  a  little  later  were  visiting  the  great 
focal  market  of  Aden  at  the  entrance  of  the  Red  Sea.56  A 
strong  infusion  of  Chinese  blood  improved  the  Malay  stock 


268 


COAST  PEOPLES 


in  the  Sunda  Islands,  and  later  in  North  Borneo  and  certain 
of  the  Philippines,  whither  their  traders  and  emigrants 
turned  in  the  fourteenth  century,  when  ilu-y  found  their  op- 
portunities curtailed  in  the  archipelago  to  the  south  by  the 
spread  of  Islam.57  Now  the  "yellow  peril"  threatens  the 
whole  circle  of  these  islands  from  Luzon  to  Sumatra. 

Similarly  India,  first  from  its  eastern,  Inter  from  its  west- 
ern coast,  sent  a  stream  of  traders,  Buddhist  priests,  and  col- 
onists to  the  Sunda  Islands,  and  especially  to  Java,  as  early 
as  the  fifth  century  of  our  era,  whence  Indian  civilization, 
religion,  and  elements  of  the  Sanskrit  tongue  spread  to  Bor- 
neo, Sumatra,  Bali,  Lombok,  and  even  to  some  smaller 
islands  among  the  Molucca  group.58  The  Hindus  became  the 
dominant  commercial  nation  of  the  Indian  Ocean  long  before 
the  great  development  of  Arabian  sea  power,  and  later  shared 
the  trade  of  the  East  African  coast  with  the  merchants  of 
Oman  and  Yemen. 5J)  To-day  they  form  a  considerable  mer- 
cantile class  in  the  ports  of  Mascat,  Aden,  Zanzibar,  Pemba, 
and  Natal. 

On  the  coasts  of  large  fertile  areas  like  China  and  India, 
however,  maritime  activity  comes  not  as  an  early,  but  as  an 
eventual  development,  assumes  not  a  dominant,  but  an  inci- 
dental historical  importance.  The  coastlands  appearing 
development,  early  on  the  maritime  stage  of  history,  and  playing  a  bril- 
liant part  in  the  drama  of  the  sea,  have  been  habitable,  but 
their  tillable  fields  have  been  limited  either  in  fertility,  as  in 
New  England,  or  in  amount,  as  in  Greece,  or  in  both  respects, 
as  in  Norway.  But  if  blessed  with  advantageous  location  for 
international  trade  and  many  or  even  a  few  fairly  good  har- 
bors, such  coasts  tend  to  develop  wide  maritime  dominion 
and  colonial  expansion.60 

Great  fertility  in  a  narrow  coastal  bolt  barred  from  the 
interior  serves  to  concentrate  and  energize  the  maritime  ac- 
tivities of  the  nation.  The  -20-mile  wide  plain  stretching 
along  the  foot  of  the  Lebanon  range  from  Antioch  to  Cape 
Carmel  is  even  now  the  garden  of  Syria.01  In  ancient  Phoe- 
nician days  its  abundant  crops  and  vines  supported  luxuriant 
cities  and  a  teeming  population,  which  sailed  and  traded 
and  colonized  to  the  Atlantic  outskirts  of  Europe  and  Africa. 


Geograph- 
ic con- 
ditions for 
brilliant 
maritime 


COAST  PEOPLES  269 

Moreover,  their  maritime  ventures  had  a  wide  sweep  as  early 
as  1100  B.  c.  Quite  similar  to  the  Phoenician  littoral  and 
almost  duplicating  its  history,  is  the  Oman  seaboard  of  east- 
ern Arabia.  Here  again  a  fertile  coastal  plain  sprinkled 
with  its  "hundred  villages,"  edged  with  a  few  tolerable  har- 
bors, and  backed  by  a  high  mountain  wall  with  an  expanse 
of  desert  beyond,  produced  a  race  of  bold  and  skilful  navi- 
gators,62 who  in  the  Middle  Ages  used  their  location  between 
the  Persian  Gulf  and  the  Arabian  Sea  to  make  themselves  the 
dominant  maritime  power  of  the  Indian  ocean.  With  them 
maritime  expansion  was  typically  wide  in  its  sweep  and  rapid 
in  its  development.  Even  before  Mohammed's  time  they 
had  reached  India ;  but  under  the  energizing  influences  of 
Islam,  by  758  they  had  established  a  flourishing  trade  with 
China,  for  which  they  set  up  way  stations  or  staple-points 
in  Canton  and  the  Sunda  Islands.63  First  as  voyagers  and 
merchants,  then  as  colonists,  they  came,  bringing  their  wares 
and  their  religion  to  these  distant  shores.  Marco  Polo,  visit- 
ing Sumatra  in  1260,  tells  us  the  coast  population  was 
"Saracen,"  but  this  was  probably  more  in  religion  than  in 
blood.64  Oman  ventures,  seconded  by  those  of  Yemen, 
reached  as  far  south  as  east.  The  trading  stations  of  Ma- 
disha  and  Barawa  were  established  on  the  Somali  coast  of 
East  Africa  in  908,  and  Kilwa  750  miles  further  south  in 
925.  In  the  seventeenth  century  the  Oman  Arabs  dislodged 
the  intruding  Portuguese  from  all  this  coast  belt  down  to  the 
present  northern  boundary  of  Portuguese  East  Africa.  Even 
so  late  as  1850  their  capital,  Mascat,  sent  out  fine  merchant- 
men that  did  an  extensive  carrying  trade,  and  might  be  seen 
loading  in  the  ports  of  British  India,  in  Singapore,  Java,  and 
Mauritius. 

Brittany's  active  part  in  the  maritime  history  of  France  Soil  of 
is  <lue  not  only  to  its  ragged  contour,  its  inshore  and  off-  coastlands 
shore   islands,   its   forward   location   on   the   Atlantic  which  as    ac  or" 
brought   it  near  to  the   fisheries  of  Newfoundland  and  the 
trade   of   the  West   Indies,   but   also   to   the   fact   that    the 
"Golden  Belt,"  which,  with  but  few  interruptions,  forms  a 
band  of  fertility  along  the  coast,  has  supported  a  denser 
population  than  the  sterile  granitic  soils   of  the  interior,65 


270 


COAST  PEOPLES 


Barren 
coast  of 
fertile 
hinterland. 


while  the  sea  near  by  varied  and  enriched  the  diet  of  the  in- 
habitants by  its  abundance  of  fish,  and  in  its  limy  seaweed 
yielded  a  valuable  fertilizer  for  their  gardens.88  The  small 
but  countless  alluvial  deposits  at  the  fiord  heads  in  Norway, 
aided  by  the  products  of  the  sea,  are  able  to  support  a  con- 
siderable number  of  people.  Hence  the  narrow  coastal  rim 
of  that  country  shows  always  a  density  of  population  double 
or  quadruple  that  of  the  next  density  belt  toward  the  moun- 
tainous interior,  and  contains  seventeen  out  of  Norway's 
nineteen  towns  having  more  than  5,000  inhabitants.67  It  is 
this  relative  fertility  of  the  coastal  regions,  as  opposed  to  the 
sterile  interior,  that  has  brought  so  large  a  part  of  Norway's 
people  in  contact  with  the  Atlantic  and  helped  give  them  a 
prominent  place  in  maritime  history. 

Occasionally  an  infertile  and  sparsely  inhabited  littoral 
bordering  a  limited  zone  of  singular  productivity,  especially 
if  favorably  located  for  international  trade,  will  develop 
marked  maritime  activity,  both  in  trade  and  commercial  col- 
onization. Such  was  Arabian  Yemen,  the  home  of  the  an- 
cient Sabaeans  on  the  Red  Sea,  stretching  from  the  Straits 
of  Bab-el-Mandeb  north-westward  for  500  miles.  Here  a 
mountain  range,  rising  to  10,000  feet  and  bordering  the 
plateau  desert  of  central  Arabia,  condenses  the  vapors  of  the 
summer  monsoon  and  creates  a  long-drawn  oasis,  where  ter- 
raced coffee  gardens  and  orchards  blossom  in  the  irrigated 
soil ;  but  the  arid  coastal  strip  at  its  feet,  harboring  a  sparse 
population  only  along  its  tricking  streams,  developed  a  se- 
ries of  considerable  ports  as  outlets  for  the  abundant  pro- 
ducts and  crowded  population  of  the  highlands.88  A  location 
on  the  busy  sea  lane  leading  from  the  Indian  Ocean  to  the 
Mediterranean,  near  the  meeting  place  of  three  continents, 
made  the  merchants  of  the  Yemen  coast,  like  the  Oman  Arabs 
to  the  north,  middlemen  in  the  trade  of  Europe  with  eastern 
Africa  and  India.89  Therefore,  even  in  the  second  century 
these  Sabaeans  had  their  trading  stations  scattered  along  the 
east  coast  of  Africa  as  far  south  as  Zanzibar.70  In  1502  Vasco 
da  Gama  found  Arabs,  either  of  Oman  or  Yemen,  yet  farther 
south  in  Sofala,  the  port  for  the  ivory  and  gold  trade.  Some 
of  them  he  employed  as  pilots  to  steer  his  course  to  India.71 


COAST  PEOPLES  271 

History  makes  one  fact  very  plain :  a  people  who  dwell  by  Scope  and 
the  sea,  and  to  whom  nature  applies  some  lash  to  drive  them  importance 
out  upon  the  deep,  command  opportunity  for  practically  un-  of  seaward 
limited  expansion.     In  this  way  small  and  apparently   ill- 
favored  strips  of  the  earth's  surface  have  become  the  seats 
of  wide  maritime  supremacy  and  colonial  empire.     The  scat- 
tered but  extensive  seaboard  possession  of  little  Venice  and 
Genoa  in  the  latter  centuries  of  the  Middle  Ages  are  paral- 
leled in  modern  times  by  the  large  oversea  dominions  of  the 
English  and  Dutch. 

Seaward  expansions  of  peoples  are  always  of  great  mo- 
ment and  generally  of  vast  extent,  whether  they  are  the  coast- 
ward  movements  of  inland  peoples  to  get  a  foothold  upon  the 
great  oceanic  highway  of  trade  and  civilization,  as  has  been 
the  case  with  the  Russians  notably  since  the  early  eighteenth 
century,  and  with  numerous  interior  tribes  of  West  Africa 
since  the  opening  of  the  slave  trade;  or  whether  they  repre- 
sent the  more  rapid  and  extensive  coastwise  and  oversea 
expansions  of  maritime  nations  like  the  English,  Dutch,  and 
Portuguese.  In  either  event  they  give  rise  to  widespread  dis- 
placements of  peoples  and  a  bizarre  arrangement  of  race  ele- 
ments along  the  coast.  When  these  two  contrary  movements 
meet,  the  shock  of  battle  follows,  as  the  recent  history  of  the 
Russians  and  Japanese  in  Manchuria  and  Korea  illustrates, 
the  wars  of  Swedes  and  Russians  for  the  possession  of  the 
eastern  Baltic  littoral,  and  the  numerous  minor  conflicts  that 
have  occurred  in  Upper  Guinea  between  European  commercial- 
powers  and  the  would-be  trading  tribes  of  the  bordering 
hinterland. 

A  coast  region  is  a  peculiar  habitat,  inasmuch  as  it  is  more  Ethnic 
or  less  dominated  by  the  sea.     It  is  exposed  to  inundation  by  contrast 

tidal  wave  and  to  occupation  by  immigrant  fleets.     It  may    etween 

,  ..*  .  ,  coast  and 

be  the  base  for  out-going  maritime  enterprise  or  the  goal  or  j^^or 

some  oversea  movement,  the  dispenser  or  the  recipient  of  col-  peoples, 
onists.  The  contrast  between  coast-dwellers  and  the  near-by 
inland  people  which  exists  so  widely  can  be  traced  not  only  to 
a  difference  of  environment,  but  often  to  a  fundamental  dif- 
ference of  race  or  tribe  caused  by  immigration  to  accessible 
shores.  The  Greeks,  crowded  in  their  narrow  peninsula  of 


272 


COAST  PEOPLES 


Ethnic 
contrasts 
in  the 
Pacific 

island  a. 


Ethnic 
contrasts 
in  the 
Americas. 


limited  fertility,  wove  an  Hellenic  border  on  the  skirts  of  the 
Black  Sea  and  eastern  Mediterranean  lands,  just  as  the  Car- 
thaginians added  a  fringe  of  aliens  to  North  Africa,  where 
the  Punic  people  of  the  coast  presented  a  marked  contrast 
to  the  Berbers  of  the  interior.  [See  map  page  251.] 

An  ethnographical  map  of  Russia  to-day  shows  a  narrow 
but  almost  continuous  rim  of  Germans  stretching  from  the 
River  Niemen  north  through  the  Baltic  coast  of  Courland, 
Livland,  and  Esthland,  as  far  as  Revel ;  and  again,  a  similar 
band  of  Swedes  along  the  seaboard  of  Finland,  from  a  point 
east  of  Helsingfors  on  the  south  around  to  Uleaborg  on  the 
north,72  dating  from  the  time  when  Finland  was  a  political 
dependency  of  Sweden,  and  influenced  by  the  fact  that  the 
frozen  Gulf  of  Bothnia  every  winter  makes  a  bridge  of  ice 
between  the  two  shores.  [See  map  page  225.] 

Everywhere  in  the  Melanesian  archipelago,  where  Papuans 
and  Malays  dwell  side  by  side,  the  latter  as  the  new-comers 
are  always  found  in  possession  of  the  coast,  while  the  darker 
aborigines  have  withdrawn  into  the  interior.  So  in  the  Phil- 
ippines, the  aboriginal  Negritos,  pure  or  more  often  mixed 
with  Malayan  blood,  as  in  the  Mangy  an  tribe  of  central  Min- 
doro,  are  found  crowded  back  into  the  interior  by  the  succes- 
sive invasions  of  Malays  who  have  encircled  the  coasts.  [See 
map  page  147.]  The  Zamboanga  peninsula  of  Mindanao  has 
an  inland  pagan  population  of  primitive  Malayan  race  called 
Subanon,  who  have  been  displaced  from  the  littoral  by  the  sea- 
faring Samal  Moros,  Mohammedanizcd  Malays  from  the  east 
shores  of  Sumatra  and  the  adjacent  islands,  who  spread  north- 
ward about  1300  under  the  energizing  impulse  of  their  new  re- 
ligion.73 Even  at  so  late  a  date  as  the  arrival  of  Magellan, 
the  Subanon  seem  to  have  still  occupied  some  points  of  the 
coast,74  just  as  the  savage  Ainos  of  the  island  of  Yezo 
touched  the  sea  about  Sapporo  only  forty  years  ago,  though 
they  are  now  surrounded  by  a  seaboard  rim  of  Japanese.75 

If  we  turn  to  South  America,  we  find  that  warlike  Tupi, 
at  the  time  of  the  discovery,  occupied  the  whole  Brazilian 
coast  from  the  southern  tropic  north  to  eastern  Guiana, 
while  the  highlands  of  eastern  Brazil  immediately  in  their 
rear  were  populated  by  tribes  of  Ges,  who  had  been  displaced 


COAST  PEOPLES  273 

by  the  coastwise  expansion  of  the  Tupi  canoemen.78  [See  map 
page  101.]  And  to-day  this  same  belt  of  coastland  has  been 
appropriated  by  a  foreign  population  of  Europeans  and  Ne- 
groes, while  the  vast  interior  of  Brazil  shows  a  predominance 
of  native  Indian  stocks,  only  broken  here  and  there  by  a  lone- 
ly enclave  of  Portuguese  settlement.  The  early  English  and 
French  territories  in  America  presented  this  same  contrast  of 
coast  and  inland  people — the  colonists  planting  themselves 
on  the  hem  of  the  continent  to  preserve  maritime  connection 
with  the  home  countries,  the  aborigines  forced  back  beyond 
reach  of  the  tide. 

Wherever  an  energetic  seafaring  people  with  marked  com- 
mercial or  colonizing  bent  make  a  highway  of  the  deep,  they 
give  rise  to  this  distinction  of  coast  and  inland  people  on 
whatever  shores  they  touch.  The  expanding  Angles  and 
Saxons  did  it  in  the  North  Sea  and  the  Channel,  where  they 
stretched  their  litus  Saxonicum  faintly  along  the  coast  of 
the  continent  to  the  apex  of  Brittany,  and  firmly  along  the 
hem^of  England  from  Southampton  Water  to  the  Firth  of 
Forth  ;77  the  sea-bred  Scandinavians  did  it  farther  north  in 
the  Teutonic  fringe  of  settlements  which  they  placed  on  the 
shores  of  Celtic  Scotland  and  Ireland.78 

As  a  rule  it  is  the  new-comers  who  hold  the  coast,  but  occa-  Older 
sionally  the  coast-dwellers  represent  the  older  ethnic  stock,  ethnic 
In  the  Balkan  Peninsula  to-day  the  descendants  of  the  ancient 
Hellenes  are,  with  few  exceptions,  confined  to  the  coast.  The 
reason  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  the  Slavs  and  other 
northern  races  who  have  intruded  by  successive  invasions 
from  the  plains  of  southern  Russia  are  primarily  inland 
peoples,  and  therefore  have  occupied  the  core  of  the  peninsula, 
forcing  the  original  Greek  population  before  them  to  the  edge 
of  the  sea.'9  This  is  the  same  anthropo-geographical  process 
which  makes  so  many  peninsulas  the  last  halting-place  of  a 
dislodged  earlier  race.  But  the  Greeks  who  line  the  northern 
and  western  shores  of  Asiatic  Turkey  are  such  only  in  lan- 
guage and  religion,  because  their  prevailing  broad  head-form 
shows  them  to  be  Turks  and  Armenians  in  race  stock.80 

Sometimes  the  distinction  of  race  between  coast  and  inte- 
rior is  obliterated  so  far  as  language  and  civilization  are  con- 


274 


COAST  PEOPLES 


Ethnic 
amalga- 
mations in 

coastlands. 


cerned,  but  survives  less  conspicuously  in  head-form  and  pig- 
mentation. The  outermost  fringe  of  the  Norwegian  coast, 
from  the  extreme  south  to  the  latitude  of  Trondhjem  in  the 
north,  is  occupied  by  a  broad-headed,  round-faced,  rather 
dark  people  of  only  medium  height,  who  show  decided  affini- 
ties with  the  Alpine  race  of  Central  Europe,  and  who  present 
a  marked  contrast  to  the  tall  narrow-headed  blondes  of  pure 
Teutonic  type,  constituting  the  prevailing  population  from 
the  inner  edge  of  the  coast  eastward  into  Sweden.  This 
brachycephalic,  un-Germanic  stock  of  the  Norwegian  sea- 
board seems  to  represent  the  last  stand  made  by  that  once 
wide-spread  Alpine  race,  which  here  has  been  shoved  along 
to  the  rocky  capes  and  islands  of  the  outer  edge  by  a  later 
Teutonic  immigration  coming  from  Sweden.81  So  the  largest 
continuous  area  of  Negrito  stock  in  the  Philippines  is  found 
in  the  Sierra  Madre  mountains  defining  the  eastern  coast  of 
northern  Luzon.82  Facing  the  neighborless  wastes  of  the 
Pacific,  whence  no  new  settler  could  come,  turned  away  from 
the  sources  of  Malay  immigration  to  the  southwest,  its  loca- 
tion made  it  a  retreat,  rather  than  a  gateway  to  incoming 
races.  [See  map  page  147.] 

Where  an  immigrant  population  from  oversea  lands  occu- 
pies the  coastal  hem  of  a  country,  rarely  do  they  preserve 
the  purity  of  their  race.  Coming  at  first  with  marauding  or 
trading  intent,  they  bring  no  women  with  them,  but  institute 
their  trading  stations  or  colonies  by  marriage  with  the  women 
of  the  country.  The  ethnic  character  of  the  resultant  popu- 
lation depends  upon  the  proportion  of  the  two  constituent 
elements,  the  nearness  or  remoteness  of  their  previous  kinship, 
and  the  degree  of  innate  race  antagonism.  The  ancient 
Greek  elements  which  crossed  the  Aegean  from  different  sec- 
tions of  the  peninsula  to  colonize  the  Ionian  coast  of  Asia 
Minor  mingled  with  the  native  Carian,  Cretan,  Lydian, 
Pelasgian,  and  Phoenician  populations  which  they  found 
there.83  On  all  the  barbarian  shores  where  the  Greeks  estab- 
lished themselves,  there  arose  a  mixed  race — in  Celtic  Mas- 
silia,  in  Libyan  Barca,  and  in  Scythian  Crimea — but  always 
a  race  Hellenized,  born  interpreters  and  mercantile  agents.84 

A  maritime  people,  engrossed  chiefly  with  the  idea  of  trade, 


COAST  PEOPLES  275 

moves  in  small  groups  and  intermittently ;  hence  it  modifies 
the  original  coastal  population  less  than  does  a  genuine  col- 
onizing nation,  especially  as  it  prefers  the  smallest  possible 
territorial  base  for  its  operations.  The  Arab  element  in  the 
coast  population  of  East  Africa  is  strongly  represented,  but 
not  so  strongly  as  one  might  expect  after  a  thousand  years 
of  intercourse,  because  it  was  scattered  in  detached  seaboard 
points,  only  a  few  of  which  were  really  stable.  The  native 
population  of  Zanzibar  and  Pemba  and  the  fringe  of  coast 
tribes  on  the  mainland  opposite  are  clearly  tinged  with  Arab 
blood.  These  Swahili,  as  they  are  called,  are  a  highly  mixed 
race,  as  their  negro  element  has  been  derived  not  only  from 
the  local  coast  peoples,  but  also  from  the  slaves  who  for  cen- 
turies have  been  halting  here  on  their  seaward  journey  from 
the  interior  of  Africa. So  [See  map  page  105.] 

Coast  peoples  tend  to  show  something  more  than  the  hy-  Multiplicity 
bridism  resulting  from  the  mingling  of  two  stocks.     So  soon  °*  race 

as  the  art  of  navigation  developed  beyond  its  initial  phase 

on  coasts, 
of  mere  coastwise  travel,  and  began  to  strike  out  across  the 

deep,  all  coast  peoples  bordered  upon  each  other,  and  the  sea 
became  a  common  waste  boundary  between.  Unlike  a  land 
boundary,  which  is  in  general  accessible  from  only  two  sides 
and  tends  to  show,  therefore,  only  two  constituent  elements 
in  its  border  population,  a  sea  boundary  is  accessible  from 
many  directions  with  almost  equal  ease ;  it  therefore  draws 
from  many  lands,  and  gives  its  population  a  variety  of  ethnic 
elements  and  a  cosmopolitan  stamp.  This,  however,  is  most 
marked  in  great  seaports,  but  from  them  it  penetrates  into 
the  surrounding  country.  The  whole  southern  and  eastern 
coast  population  of  England,  from  Cornwall  to  the  Wash, 
received  during  Elizabeth's  reign  valuable  accessions  of  in- 
dustrious Flemings  and  Huguenots,  refugees  from  Catholic 
persecution  in  the  Netherlands  and  France.86  Our  North 
Atlantic  States,  whose  population  is  more  than  half  (50.9 
per  cent.)  made  up  of  aliens  and  natives  born  of  foreign  par- 
ents,87 have  drawn  these  elements  from  almost  the  whole  circle 
of  Atlantic  shores,  from  Norway  to  Argentine  and  from  Ar- 
gentine to  Newfoundland.  Even  the  Southern  States,  so  long 
unattractive  to  immigrants  on  account  of  the  low  status  of 


276  COAST  PEOPLES 

labor,  show  a  fringe  of  various  foreign  elements  along  the 
Gulf  coast,  the  deeper  tint  of  which  on  the  census  maps  fades 
off  rapidly  toward  the  interior.  The  same  phenomenon 
appears  with  Asiatic  and  Australian  elements  in  our  Pacific 
seaboard  states.88  The  cosmopolitan  population  of  New  York, 
with  its  "Chinatown,"  its  "Little  Italy,"  its  Russian  and 
Hungarian  quarters,  has  its  counterpart  in  the  mixed  popu- 
lation of  Mascat,  peopled  by  Hindu,  Arabs,  Persians, 
Kurds,  Afghans,  and  Baluchis,  settled  here  for  purposes  of 
trade ;  or  in  the  equally  mongrel  inhabitants  of  Aden  and  Zan- 
zibar, of  Marseilles,  Constantinople,  Alexandria,  Port  Said, 
and  other  Mediterranean  ports. 

Lingua  The  cosmopolitanism  and  the  commercial  activity  that  char- 

franca  of        acterize  so  many  seaboards  are  reflected  in  the  fact  that,  with 
coasts.  rare  exceptions,  it  is  the  coast  regions  of  the  world  that  give 

rise  to  a  lingua  franca  or  lingua  geral.  The  original  lingua 
franca  arose  on  the  coast  of  the  Levant  during  the  period 
of  Italian  commercial  supremacy  there.  It  consisted  of  an 
Italian  stock,  on  which  were  grafted  Greek,  Arabic,  and 
Turkish  words,  and  was  the  regular  language  of  trade  for 
French,  Spanish,  and  Italians.88  It  is  still  spoken  in  many 
Mediterranean  ports,  especially  in  Smyrna,  and  in  the  early 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  in  use  from  Madagascar 
to  the  Philippines.90  From  the  coastal  strip  of  the  Zanzibar 
Arabs,  recently  transferred  to  German  East  Africa,  the 
speech  of  the  Swahili  has  become  a  means  of  communication 
over  a  great  part  of  East  Africa,  from  the  coast  to  the  Congo 
and  the  sources  of  the  Nile.  It  is  a  Bantu  dialect  permeated 
with  Arabic  and  Hindu  terms,  and  sparsely  sprinkled  even 
with  English  and  German  words.81  "Pidgin  English"  (busi- 
ness English)  performs  the  function  of  a  lingua  franca  in 
the  ports  of  China  and  the  Far  East.  It  is  a  jargon  of  cor- 
rupted English  with  a  slight  mixture  of  Chinese,  Malay,  and 
Portuguese  words,  arranged  according  to  the  Chinese  idiom. 
Another  mongrel  English  does  service  on  the  coast  of  New 
Guinea.  The  "Nigger  English"  of  the  West  African  trade 
is  a  regular  dialect  among  the  natives  of  the  Sierra  Leone 
coast.  Farther  east,  along  the  Upper  Guinea  littoral,  the 
Eboe  family  of  tribes  who  extend  across  the  Niger  delta  from 


COAST  PEOPLES  277 

Lagos  to  Old  Calabar  have  furnished  a  language  of  trade  in 
one  of  their  dialects.92  The  Tupi  speech  of  the  Brazilian 
coast  Indians,  with  whom  the  explorers  first  came  into  con- 
tact, became,  in  the  mouth  of  Portuguese  traders  and  Jesuit 
missionaries,  the  lingua  geral  or  medium  of  communication 
between  the  whites  and  the  various  Indian  tribes  through- 
out Brazil.93  The  Chinook  Indians,  located  on  our  Pacific 
coast  north  and  south  of  the  Columbia  River,  have  furnished 
a  jargon  of  Indian,  French,  and  English  words  which  serves 
as  a  language  of  trade  throughout  a  long  stretch  of  the 
northwest  Pacific  coast,  not  only  between  whites  and 
Indians,  but  also  between  Indians  of  different  linguistic 
stocks.94 

The  coast  is  the  natural  habitat  of  the  middleman.  One  Coast- 
strip  of  seaboard  produces  a  middleman  people,  and  then  dwellers 
sends  them  out  to  appropriate  other  littorals,  if  geographic  at 
conditions  are  favorable ;  otherwise  it  is  content  with  the 
transit  trade  of  its  own  locality.  It  breeds  essentially  a  race 
of  merchants,  shunning  varied  production,  nursing  monopoly 
by  secrecy  and  every  method  to  crush  competition.  The 
profits  of  trade  attract  all  the  free  citizens,  and  the 
laboring  class  is  small  or  slave.  Expansion  landward  has 
no  attraction  in  comparison  with  the  seaward  expansion  of 
commerce.  The  result  is  often  a  relative  dearth  of  local 
land-grown  food  stuffs.  King  Hiram  of  Tyre,  in  his  letter 
to  King  Solomon,  promised  to  send  him  trees  of  cedar  and 
cypress,  made  into  rafts  and  conveyed  to  the  coast  of 
Philistia,  and  asked  in  return  for  grain,  "which  we  stand  in 
need  of  because  we  inhabit  an  island."  The  pay  came  in  the 
form  of  wheat,  oil,  and  wine.  But  Solomon  furnished  a  con- 
siderable part  of  the  laborers — 30,000  of  them — who  were 
sent,  10,000  at  a  time,  to  Mount  Lebanon  to  cut  the  timber, 
apparently  under  the  direction  of  the  more  skilful  Sidon- 
ian  foresters.95  A  type  of  true  coast  traders  is  found  in  the 
Duallas  of  the  German  Kamerun,  at  the  inner  angle  of  the 
Gulf  of  Guinea.  Located  along  the  lower  course  and  delta 
of  the  Mungo  River  where  it  flows  into  the  Kamerun  estuary, 
they  command  a  good  route  through  a  mountainous  country 
into  the  interior.  This  they  guard  jealously,  excluding  all 


278 


COAST  PEOPLES 


Monopoly 
of  trade 
with  the 
hinterland. 


competition,  monopolizing  the  trade,  and  imposing  a  transit 
duty  on  all  articles  going  to  and  from  the  interior.  They 
avoid  agriculture  so  far  as  possible.  Their  women  and  slaves 
produce  an  inadequate  supply  of  bananas  and  yams,  but  crops 
needing  much  labor  are  wholly  neglected,  so  that  their  coasts 
have  a  reputation  for  dearness  of  provisions." 

Along  the  4,500  miles  of  West  African  coast  between  the 
Senegal  and  the  Kunene  rivers  the  negro's  natural  talent  for 
trade  has  developed  special  tribes,  who  act  as  intermediaries 
between  the  interior  and  the  European  stations  on  the  sea- 
board. Among  these  we  find  the  Bihenos  and  Banda  of 
Portuguese  Benguela,  who  fit  out  whole  caravans  for  the 
back  country ;  the  Portuguese  of  Loanda  rely  on  the  Amba- 
quistas  and  the  Mbunda  middlemen.  The  slave  trade  par- 
ticularly brought  a  sinister  and  abnormal  activity  to  these 
seaboard  tribes,97  just  as  it  did  to  the  East  Coast  tribes, 
and  stimulated  both  in  the  exploitation  of  their  geographic 
position  as  middlemen.98 

The  Alaskan  coast  shows  the  same  development.  The 
Kinik  Indians  at  the  head  of  Cook's  Inlet  buy  skins  of  land 
animals  from  the  inland  Athapascans  at  the  sources  of  the 
Copper  River,  and  then  make  a  good  profit  by  selling  them 
to  the  American  traders  of  the  coast.  These  same  Athapas- 
cans for  a  long  time  found  a  similar  body  of  middlemen  in 
the  Ugalentz  at  the  mouth  of  the  Copper  River,  till  the 
Americans  there  encouraged  the  inland  hunters  to  bring 
their  skins  to  the  fur  station  on  the  coast.99  The  Chilcats 
at  the  head  of  Lynn  Canal  long  monopolized  the  fur  trade 
with  the  Athapascan  Indians  about  Chilkoot  Pass ;  these 
they  would  meet  on  the  divide  and  buy  tlu-ir  skins,  which 
they  would  carry  to  the  Hudson  Bay  Company  agents  on 
the  coast.  They  guarded  their  monopoly  jealously,  and  for 
fifty  years  were  able  to  exclude  all  traders  and  miners  from 
the  passes  leading  to  the  Yukon.1'" 

The  same  policy  of  monopoly  and  exclusion  has  been 
pursued  by  the  Moro  coast  dwellers  of  Mindanao  in  relation 
to  the  pagan  tribes  of  the  interior.  They  buy  at  low 
prices  the  forest  and  agriculture  products  of  the  inland 
Malays,  whom  they  do  not  permit  to  approach  either  rivers 


COAST  PEOPLES  279 

or  seaboard,  for  fear  they  may  come  into  contact  with  the 
Chinese  merchants  along  the  coast.  So  fiercely  is  their 
monopoly  guarded  by  this  middleman  race,  that  the  Ameri- 
can Government  in  the  Philippines  will  be  able  to  break  it 
only  by  military  interference.101 

Differences  of  occupation,  of  food  supply,  and  of  climate  Differen- 
often   further   operate   to   differentiate   the   coast   from   the  tiation  of 

inland  people  near  by,  and  to  emphasize  the  ethnic  difference  ?( 

.     J    .  .  .  inland 

which   is    almost   invariably   present,    either   inconspicuously  ^Q^IQ. 

from  a  slight  infusion  of  alien  blood,  or  plainly  as  in  an 
immigrant  race.  Sometimes  the  contrast  is  in  physique. 
In  Finisterre  province  of  western  Brittany,  the  people  along 
the  more  fertile  coastal  strip  are  on  the  average  an  inch  taller 
than  the  inhabitants  of  the  barren,  granitic  interior.  Their 
more  generous  food  supply,  further  enriched  by  the  abundant 
fisheries  at  their  doors,  would  account  for  this  increased 
stature;  but  this  must  also  be  attributed  in  part  to  inter- 
mixture of  the  local  Celts  with  a  tall  Teutonic  stock  which 
brushed  along  these  shores,  but  did  not  penetrate  into  the 
unattractive  interior.101  So  the  negroes  of  the  Guinea  Coast, 
though  not  immune  from  fevers,  are  better  nourished  on  the 
alluvial  lowlands  near  the  abundant  fish  of  the  lagoons,  and 
hence  are  often  stronger  and  better  looking  than  the  plateau 
interior  tribes  near  by.  But  here,  again,  an  advantageous 
blending  of  races  can  not  be  excluded  as  a  contributing 
cause.102  Sometimes  the  advantage  in  physique  falls  to  the 
inland  people,  especially  in  tropical  countries  when  a  high- 
land interior  is  contrasted  with  a  low  coast  belt.  The  wild 
Igorotes,  inhabiting  the  mountainous  interior  of  northern 
Luzon,  enjoy  a  cooler  climate  than  the  lowlands,  and  this  has 
resulted  in  developing  in  them  a  decidedly  better  physique 
and  more  industrious  habits  than  are  found  in  the  civilized 
people  of  the  coasts  encircling  them.104 

Where  a  coast  people  is  an  immigrant  stock  from  some  Early 
remote  oversea  point,  it  brings  to  its  new  home  a  surplus  of  civilization 
energy  which  was  perhaps  the  basis  of  selection  in  the  exodus  °   coas  ' 
from  the  mother  country.     Such  a  people  is  therefore  char- 
acterized  by   greater   initiative,   enterprise,    and   endurance 
than  the  sedentary  population  which  it  left  behind  or  that 


280 


COAST  PEOPLES 


to  which  it  comes ;  and  these  qualities  are  often  further  stim- 
ulated by  the  transfer  to  a  new  environment  rich  in  oppor- 
tunities. Sea-born  in  their  origin,  sea-borne  in  their  migra- 
tion, they  cling  to  the  zone  of  littoral,  because  here  they  find 
the  conditions  which  they  best  know  how  to  exploit.  Dwell- 
ing on  the  highway  of  the  ocean,  living  in  easy  intercourse 
with  distant  countries,  which  would  have  been  far  more 
difficult  of  access  by  land-travel  over  territories  inhabited  by 
hostile  races,  exchanging  with  these  both  commodities  and 
ideas,  food-stuffs  and  religions,  they  become  the  children  of 
civilization,  and  their  sun-burned  seamen  the  sturdy  apostles 
of  progress.  Therefore  it  may  be  laid  down  as  a  general 
proposition,  that  the  coasts  of  a  country  are  the  first  part 
of  it  to  develop,  not  an  indigenous  or  local  civilization,  but 
a  cosmopolitan  culture,  which  later  spreads  inland  from  the 
seaboard. 

Retarded  Exceptions  to  this  rule  are  found  in  barren  or  inaccessible 

coastal  coasts  like  the  Pacific  littoral  of  Peru  and  Mexico,  and  on 

peoples.  shores  like  those  of  California,  western  Africa  and  eastern 
Luzon,  which  occupy  an  adverse  geographic  location  facing 
a  neighborless  expanse  of  ocean  and  remote  from  the  world's 
earlier  foci  of  civilization.  Therefore  the  descent  from  the 
equatorial  plateau  of  Africa  down  to  the  Atlantic  littoral 
means  a  drop  in  culture  also,  because  the  various  elements 
of  civilization  which  for  ages  have  uninterruptedly  filtered 
into  Sudan  from  the  Mediterranean  and  the  Red  Sea,  have 
rarely  penetrated  to  the  western  rim  of  the  highland,  and 
hence  never  reached  the  coast.  Moreover,  this  steaming  low- 
land, from  the  Senegal  River  to  the  Kamerun  Mountains, 
has  been  a  last  asylum  for  dislodged  tribes  who  have  been 
driven  out  by  expanding  peoples  of  the  plateau.  They  have 
descended  in  their  flight  upon  the  original  coast  dwellers, 
adding  to  the  general  condition  of  political  disruption,  multi- 
plying the  number  of  small  weak  tribes,  increasing  the 
occasions  for  intertribal  wars,  and  furthering  the  prevailing 
degradation.  The  seaboard  lowlands  of  Sierra  Leone, 
Liberia  and  the  Ivory  Coast  have  all  suffered  thus  in  historic 
times.101  All  this  region  was  the  original  home  of  the  low, 
typical  "Guinea  Nigger"  of  the  Southern  plantation.  The 


COAST  PEOPLES  281 

coasts  of  Oregon  and  California  showed  a  parallel  to  this  in 
their  fragmentary  native  tribes  of  retarded  development, 
whose  level  of  culture,  low  at  best,  sank  rapidly  from  the 
interior  toward  the  seaboard.  They  seem  to  have  been 
intruders  from  the  central  highlands,  who  further  deteriora- 
ted in  their  weakness  and  isolation  after  reaching  the  coast. 
They  bore  every  mark  of  degradation  in  their  short  stature, 
linguistic  and  tribal  dismemberment,  their  low  morals  and 
culture,  which  ranked  them  little  above  the  brutes.  In  con- 
trast, all  the  large  and  superior  Indian  groups  of  North 
America  belonged  to  the  interior  of  the  continent.106 

The  long,  indented  coast  of  the  Mediterranean  has  in  all  Cultural 
ages  up  to  modern  times  presented  the  contrast  of  a  littoral  contrast  of 
more  advanced  in  civilization  than  the  inland  districts.     The  ?' 
only  exception  was  ancient  Egypt  before  Psammeticus  began 
to    exploit    his    mud-choked    seaboard.      This    contrast   was 
apparent,    not    only    wherever    Phoenicians    or    Greeks    had 
appropriated   the   remote   coast    of   an    alien    and    retarded 
people,  but  even  in  near-by  Thrace  the  savage  habits  of  the 
interior  tribes  were  softened  only  where  these  dwelt  in  close 
proximity  to  the  Ionian  colonies  along  the  coast,  a  fact  as 
noticeable  in  the  time  of  Tacitus  as  in  that  of  Herodotus  five 
hundred  years  before.107     The  ancient  philosophers  of  Greece 
were  awake  to  the  deep-rooted  differences  between  an  inland 
and  a  maritime  city,  especially  in  respect  to  receptivity  of 
ideas,  activity  of  intellect,  and  affinity  for  culture.108 

If  we  turn  to  the  Philippines,  we  find  that  65  per  cent, 
of  the  Christian  or  civilized  population  of  the  islands  live 
on  or  near  the  coast ;  and  of  the  remaining  35  per  cent, 
dwelling  inland,  by  far  the  greater  part  represents  simply 
the  landward  extension  of  the  area  of  Christian  civilization 
which  had  Manila  Bay  for  a  nucleus.109  Otherwise,  all  the 
interior  districts  are  occupied  by  wild  or  pagan  tribes. 
Mohammedanism,  too,  a  religion  of  civilization,  rims  the 
southernmost  islands  which  face  the  eastern  distributing 
point  of  the  faith  in  Java ;  it  is  confined  to  the  coasts,  except 
for  its  one  inland  area  of  expansion  along  the  lake  and  river 
system  of  the  Rio  Grande  of  Mindanao,  which  afforded  an 
inland  extension  of  sea  navigation  for  the  small  Moro  boat. 


282  COAST  PEOPLES 

Even   the   Fiji   Islands   show   different   shades   of   savagery 
between  coasts  and  interior.1" 

Progress  Coasts   are  areas   of   out-going  and   in-coming   maritime 

from  tha-  influences.  The  nature  and  amount  of  these  influences  depend 
upon  the  sea  or  ocean  whose  rim  the  coast  in  question  helps 
to  form,  and  the  relations  of  that  coast  to  its  other  tide- 
washed  shores.  Our  land-made  point  of  view  dominates  us 
so  completely,  that  we  are  prone  to  consider  a  coast  as 
margin  of  its  land,  and  not  also  as  margin  of  its  sea,  whence, 
moreover,  it  receives  the  most  important  contributions  to  its 
development.  The  geographic  location  of  a  coast  as  part 
of  a  thalassic  or  of  an  oceanic  rim  is  a  basic  factor  in  its 
history ;  more  potent  than  local  conditions  of  fertility,  irreg- 
ular contour,  or  accessibility  from  sea  and  hinterland. 
Everything  that  can  be  said  about  the  different  degrees 
of  historical  importance  attaching  to  inland  seas  and  open 
oceans  in  successive  ages  applies  equally  to  the  countries 
and  peoples  along  their  shores;  and  everything  that  en- 
hances or  diminishes  the  cultural  possibilities  of  a  sea — its 
size,  zonal  location,  its  relation  to  the  oceans  and  continents 
— finds  its  expression  in  the  life  along  its  coasts. 

The  anthropo-geographical  evolution  which  has  passed 
from  small  to  large  states  and  from  small  to  large  seas  as 
fields  of  maritime  activity  has  been  attended  by  a  continuous 
change  in  the  value  of  coasts,  according  as  these  were  located 
on  enclosed  basins  like  the  Mediterranean,  Red,  and  Baltic; 
on  marginal  ones  like  the  China  and  North  seas ;  or  on  the 
open  ocean.  In  the  earlier  periods  of  the  world's  history, 
a  location  on  a  relatively  small  enclosed  sea  gave  a  maritime 
horizon  wide  enough  to  lure,  but  not  so  wide  as  to  intimidate ; 
and  by  its  seclusion  led  to  a  concentration  and  intensification 
of  historical  development,  which  in  many  of  its  phases  left 
models  for  subsequent  ages  to  wonder  at  and  imitate.  This 
formative  period  and  formative  environment  outgrown,  his- 
torical development  was  transferred  to  locations  on  the 
open  oceans,  according  to  the  law  of  human  advance  from 
small  to  large  areas.  The  historical  importance  of  the 
Mediterranean  and  the  Baltic  shores  was  transitory,  a 
prelude  to  the  larger  importance  of  the  Atlantic  littoral  of 


COAST  PEOPLES  283 

Europe,  just  as  this  in  turn  was  to  attain  its  full  significance 
only  when  the  circumnavigation  of  Africa  and  South  Amer- 
ica linked  the  Atlantic  to  the  World  Ocean.  Thus  that 
gradual  expansion  of  the  geographic  horizon  which  has 
accompanied  the  progress  of  history  has  seen  a  slow  evolu- 
tion in  the  value  of  seaboard  locations,  the  transfer  of 
maritime  leadership  from  small  to  large  basins,  from  thalassic 
to  oceanic  ports,  from  Lubeck  to  Hamburg,  from  Venice 
to  Genoa,  as  earlier  from  the  Piraeus  to  Ostia,  and  later  from 
England's  little  Cinque  Ports  to  Liverpool  and  the  Clyde. 

Though  the  articulations  of  a  coast  determine  the  ease  Geograph- 
with  which  maritime  influences  are  communicated  to  the  land,  ic  location 
nevertheless  history  shows  repeated  instances  where  an  excep-  °  coas  8' 
tional  location,  combined  with  restricted  area,  has  raised  a 
poorly  indented  seaboard  to  maritime  and  cultural  pre- 
eminence. Phoenicia's  brilliant  history  rose  superior  to  the 
limitation  of  indifferent  harbors,  owing  to  a  position  on  the 
Arabian  isthmus  between  the  Mediterranean  and  the  Indian 
Ocean  at  the  meeting  place  of  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa. 
Moreover,  the  advantages  of  this  particular  location  have 
in  various  times  and  in  various  degrees  brought  into  promi- 
nence all  parts  of  the  Syrian  and  Egyptian  coasts  from 
Antioch  to  Alexandria.  So  the  whole  stretch  of  coast  around 
the  head  of  the  Adriatic,  marking  the  conjunction  of  a  busy 
sea-route  with  various  land-routes  over  the  encircling  moun- 
tains from  Central  Europe,  has  seen  during  the  ages  a  long 
succession  of  thriving  maritime  cities,  in  spite  of  fast-silting 
harbors  and  impeded  connection  with  the  hinterland.  Here 
in  turn  have  ruled  with  maritime  sway  Spina,  Ravenna, 
Aquileia,111  Venice,  and  Trieste.  On  the  other  side  of  the 
Italian  peninsula,  the  location  on  the  northernmost  inlet  of 
the  western  Mediterranean  and  at  the  seaward  base  of  the 
Ligurian  Apennines,  just  where  this  range  opens  two  passes 
of  only  1,800  feet  elevation  to  the  upper  Po  Valley,  made  an 
active  maritime  town  of  Genoa  from  Strabo's  day  to  the 
present.  In  its  incipiency  it  relied  upon  one  mediocre  harbor 
on  an  otherwise  harborless  coast,  a  local  supply  of  timber 
for  its  ships,  and  a  road  northward  across  the  mountains.112 
The  maritime  ascendency  in  the  Middle  Ages  of  Genoa,  Pisa, 


28-1 


COAST  PEOPLES 


Inter- 
mediate 
location 
between 
contrasted 
coasts. 


Historical 
decline  of 
certain 
coasts. 


Venice,  and  Barcelona  proves  that  no  long  indented  coast 
is  necessary,  but  only  one  tolerable  harbor  coupled  with  an 
advantageous  location. 

Owing  to  the  ease  and  cheapness  of  water  transportation, 
a  seaboard  position  between  two  other  coasts  of  contrasted 
products  due  to  a  difference  either  of  zonal  location  or  of 
economic  development  or  of  both  combined,  insures  com- 
mercial exchanges  and  the  inevitable  activities  of  the  middle- 
man. The  position  of  Carthage  near  the  center  of  the 
Mediterranean  enabled  her  to  fatten  on  the  trade  between 
the  highly  developed  eastern  basin  and  the  retarded  western 
one.  Midway  between  the  teeming  industrial  towns  of 
medieval  Flanders,  Holland,  and  western  Germany,  and  the 
new  unexploited  districts  of  retarded  Russia,  Poland,  and 
Scandinavia,  lay  the  long  line  of  the  German  Hanseatic 
towns — Kiel,  Lubeck,  Wismar,  Rostock,  Stralsund,  Greifs- 
wald,  Anclam,  Stettin,  and  Colberg,  the  civitates  maritime. 
For  three  centuries  or  more  they  made  themselves  the  domi- 
nant commercial  and  maritime  power  of  the  Baltic  by 
exchanging  Flemish  fabrics,  German  hardware,  and  Spanish 
wines  for  the  furs  and  wax  of  Russian  forests,  tallow  and 
hides  from  Polish  pastures,  and  crude  metals  from  Swedish 
mines. li;  So  Portugal  by  its  geographical  location  became 
a  staple  place  where  the  tropical  products  from  the  East 
Indies  were  transferred  to  the  vessels  of  Dutch  merchants, 
and  by  them  distributed  to  northern  Europe.  Later  New 
England,  by  a  parallel  location,  became  the  middleman  in 
the  exchanges  of  the  tropical  products  of  the  West  Indies, 
the  tobacco  of  Virginia,  and  the  wheat  of  Maryland  for  the 
manufactured  wares  of  England  and  the  fish  of  New- 
foundland. 

Primitive  or  early  maritime  commerce  has  always  been 
characterized  by  the  short  beat,  a  succession  of  middlemen 
coasts,  and  a  close  series  of  staple-places,  such  as  served 
the  early  Indian  Ocean  trade  in  Oman,  Malabar  Coast, 
Ceylon,  Coromandel  Coast,  Malacca,  and  Java.  Therefore, 
many  a  littoral  admirably  situated  for  middleman  trade 
loses  this  advantage  so  soon  as  commerce  matures  enough  to 
extend  the  sweep  of  its  voyages,  and  to  bring  into  direct  con- 


COAST  PEOPLES  285 

tact  the  two  nations  for  which  that  coast  was  intermediary. 
This  is  only  another  aspect  of  the  anthropo-geographic 
evolution  from  small  to  large  areas.  The  decline  of  the 
Mediterranean  coasts  followed  close  upon  the  discovery  of 
the  sea-route  to  India ;  nor  was  their  local  importance 
restored  by  the  Suez  Canal.  Portugal  declined  when  the 
Dutch,  excluded  from  the  Tagus  mouth  on  the  union  of 
Portugal  with  Spain,  found  their  way  to  the  Spice  Isles. 
Ceylon,  though  still  the  chief  port  of  call  in  the  Indian  Ocean, 
has  lost  its  preeminence  as  chief  market  for  all  the  lands 
between  Africa  and  China,  which  it  enjoyed  in  the  sixth  cen- 
tury, owing  to  the  "long  haul"  of  modern  oceanic  commerce. 

Not    only    that    far-reaching    readjustment   of   maritime  Political 
ascendency    which    in    the    sixteenth    century    followed    the  factors  ifl 

advance   from  thalassic   to   oceanic   fields  of  commerce,  but    . 

cline. 
also  purely  local  political  events  may   for  a  time  produce 

striking  changes  in  the  use  or  importance  of  coasts.  The 
Piraeus,  which  had  been  the  heart  of  ancient  Athens,  almost 
wholly  lost  its  value  in  the  checkered  political  history  of  the 
country  during  the  Middle  Ages,  when  naval  power  and 
merchant  marine  almost  vanished;  but  with  the  restoration 
of  Grecian  independence  in  1832,  much  of  its  pristine  activity 
was  restored.  Up  to  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, Japan  had  exploited  her  advantageous  location  and 
her  richly  indented  coast  to  develop  a  maritime  trade  which 
extended  from  Kamchatka  to  India;  but  in  1624  an  imperial 
order  withdrew  every  Japanese  vessel  from  the  high  seas,  and 
for  over  two  hundred  years  robbed  her  busy  littoral  of  all 
its  historical  significance.  The  real  life  of  the  Pacific  coast 
of  the  United  States  began  only  with  its  incorporation  into 
the  territory  of  the  Republic,  but  it  failed  to  attain  its  full 
importance  until  our  acquisition  of  Alaska,  Hawaii,  and 
the  Philippines.  So  the  coast  of  the  Persian  Gulf  has  had 
periods  of  activity  alternating  with  periods  of  deathlike 
quiet.  Its  conquest  by  the  Saracens  in  the  seventh  century 
inaugurated  an  era  of  intense  maritime  enterprise  along  its 
drowsy  shores.  What  new  awakening  may  it  experience,  if  Physical 
it  should  one  day  become  a  Russian  littoral !  causes  of 

Sometimes  the  decline  in  historical  importance  is  due  to  decline. 


286 


COAST  PEOPLES 


Interplay 
of  geo- 
graphic 
factors  in 

coastlands. 


physical  modifications  in  the  coast  itself,  especially  wher.. 
the  mud  transported  by  a  great  river  to  the  sea  is  constantly 
pushing  forward  the  outer  shoreline.  The  control  of  the 
Adriatic  passed  in  turn  from  Spina  to  Adria,  Ravenna, 
Aquileia,  Venice,  and  Trieste,  owing  to  a  steady  silting  up 
of  the  coast. n^  Strabo  records  that  Spina,  originally  a  port, 
was  in  his  time  90  stadia,  or  10  miles,  from  the  sea.ll! 
Bruges,  once  the  great  entrepot  of  the  Hanseatic  League, 
was  originally  on  an  arm  of  the  sea,  with  which  it  was 
later  connected  by  canal,  and  which  has  been  silted  up  since 
1432,  so  that  its  commerce,  disturbed  too  by  local  wars, 
was  transferred  to  Antwerp  on  the  Scheldt.116  Many  early 
English  ports  on  the  coast  of  Kent  and  on  the  old  solid  rim 
of  the  Fenland  marshes  now  lie  miles  inland  from  the  Channel 
and  the  Wash. 

A  people  never  utilizes  all  parts  of  its  coast  with  equal 
intensity,  or  any  part  with  equal  intensity  in  all  periods  of 
its  development;  but,  according  to  the  law  of  differentiation, 
it  gradually  concentrates  its  energies  in  a  few  favored  ports, 
whose  maritime  business  tends  to  become  specialized.  Then 
every  extension  of  the  subsidiary  territory  and  intensifica- 
tion of  production  with  advancing  civilization  increases  the 
mass  of  men  and  wares  passing  through  these  ocean  gate- 
ways. The  shores  of  New  York,  Delaware,  and  Chesapeake 
bays  are  more  important  to  the  country  now  than  they  were 
in  early  colonial  days,  when  their  back  country  extended 
only  to  the  watershed  of  the  Appalachian  system.  Our  Gulf 
coast  has  gained  in  activity  with  the  South's  economic  advance 
from  slave  to  free  labor,  and  from  almost  exclusive  cotton 
planting  to  diversified  production  combined  with  industries; 
and  it  will  come  into  its  own,  in  a  maritime  sense,  when  the 
opening  of  the  Panama  Canal  will  divert  from  the  Atlantic 
outlets  those  products  of  the  Mississippi  basin  which  will  be 
seeking  Trans-Pacific  markets. 

A  careful  analysis  of  the  life  of  coast  peoples  in  relation 
to  all  the  factors  of  their  land  and  sea  environment  shows 
that  these  are  multiform,  and  that  none  are  negligible;  it 
takes  into  consideration  the  extent,  fertility,  and  relief  of 
the  littoral,  its  accessibility  from  the  land  as  well  as  from 


COAST  PEOPLES  287 

the  sea,  and  its  location  in  regard  to  outlying  islands  and 
to  opposite  shores,  whether  near  or  far;  it  holds  in  view 
not  only  the  small  articulations  that  give  the  littoral  ready 
contact  with  the  sea,  but  the  relation  of  the  seaboard  to  the 
larger  continental  articulations,  whether  it  lies  on  an  out- 
running spur  of  a  continental  mass,  like  the  Malacca,  Yemen, 
or  Peloponnesian  coast,  or  upon  a  retiring  inlet  that  brings 
it  far  into  the  heart  of  a  continent,  and  provides  it  with 
an  extensive  hinterland;  and,  finally,  it  never  ignores  the 
nature  of  the  bordering  sea,  which  furnishes  the  school  of 
seamanship  and  fixes  the  scope  of  maritime  enterprise. 

All  these  various  elements  of  coastal  environment  are 
further  differentiated  in  their  use  and  their  influence  accord- 
ing to  the  purposes  of  those  who  come  to  tenant  such  tide- 
washed  rims  of  the  land.  Pirates  seek  intricate  channels 
and  hidden  inlets  for  their  lairs ;  a  merchant  people  select 
populous  harbors  and  navigable  river  mouths ;  would-be 
colonists  settle  upon  fertile  valleys  opening  into  quiet  bays, 
till  their  fields,  and  use  their  coasts  for  placid  maritime  trade 
with  the  mother  country ;  interior  peoples,  pushed  or  pushing 
out  to  the  tidal  periphery  of  their  continent,  with  no  mari- 
time history  behind  them,  build  their  fishing  villages  on 
protected  lagoons,  and,  unless  the  shadowy  form  of  some 
outlying  island  lure  them  farther,  there  they  tarry,  deaf  to 
the  siren  song  of  the  sea. 


NOTES  TO   CHAPTER   VIII 

1.  Eudolph    Reinhard,    Die    Wichtigsten    Deutschen    SeeJiandelstddte. 
pp.  24,  25.     Stuttgart,  1901.     Joseph  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  p.  291. 
London,  1903. 

2.  Ibid.,  p.  301. 

3.  John  Richard  Green,  The  Making  of  England,  Vol.  I,  pp.  51-54; 
maps,  pp.  36  and  54.     London,  1904. 

4.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  12,  63;  maps  pp.  xxii  and  54. 

5.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  98,  139.     London,  1896- 
1898. 

6.  Joseph  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  pp.  284-288.     London,  1903. 

7.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  251.     New  York,  1902. 

8.  Rudolph    Reinhard,    Die    Wichtigsten    Deutschen    Seehandelstadte, 
pp.  21-22.     Stuttgart,  1901. 


288  COAST  PEOPLES 

9.  Fitz-Roy  and  Darwin,  Voyage  of  the  Beagle,  Vol.  II,  pp.  140,  178; 
Vol.   Ill,   pp.   231-236.     London,   1839. 

10.  Eleventh  Census,  Population  and  Resources  of  Alaska,  pp.  166-171. 
Washington,   1893. 

11.  Nordenskiold,  The  Voyage  of  the  Vega,  pp.  327,  334,  335,  365,  366, 
412,  416,  459,  467.     New  York,  1882. 

12.  G.  Frederick  Wright,  Greenland  Icefields,  pp.  68-70,  100,  105.   New 
York,  1896.     For  Eskimo  of  Hudson  Bay  and  Baffin  Land,  see  F.  Boas, 
The  Central  Eskimo,  pp.  419,  420,  460-462.    Sixth  Annual  Report  of  the 
Bureau  of  Ethnology.    Washington,  1888. 

13.  Bello  Gallico,  Book  III,  chap.  12. 

14.  Ernst  Curtius,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  I,  p.  15.     New  York. 

15.  Strabo's  Geography,  Book  II,  chap.  V,  4.    Book  III,  chap.  I,  4. 

16.  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  266-267.     New  York,  1857. 

17.  Thucydides,  Book  VI,  2. 

18.  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  273.     New  York,  1857. 

19.  Strabo's   Geography,  Book  XVII,  chap.  Ill,   13,   14. 

20.  Thucydides,  Book  I,  5,  7,  8. 

21.  Strabo,  Book  VIII,  chap.  VI,  2,  4,   13,  14,  22. 

22.  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  4,  191.     New  York,  1857- 

23.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  p.  291.     London,  1903. 

24.  Rudolph  Reinhard,  Die  Wichtigsten  Deutschen  Seehandelstddte,  p. 
23.     Stuttgart,   1901. 

25.  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  273.     New  York,  1857. 

26.  Bunbury,  History  of  Ancient  Geography,  Vol.  II,  pp.  452-454,  610. 
London,  1883.     Duarte  3arbosa,  East  Africa  and  Malabar  Coasts  in  the 
Sixteenth  Century,  p.  3-16.     Hakluyt  Society,  London,  1866. 

27.  Ernst  Curtius,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  I,  pp.  433-434.     New  York. 

28.  W.  B.  Weeden,  Economic  and  Social  History  of  New  England,  Vol. 
I,  p.  93.     Boston,  1899. 

29.  Norway,  Official  Publication,  p.  1.     Christiania,  1900. 

30.  Ratzel,  Deutschland,  pp.  150-151.     Leipzig,  1898. 

31.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  pp.  227-230.     London,  1903. 

32.  Elisee  Reclus,  The  Earth  and  Its  Inhabitants;  Europe,  Vol.  1,  pp. 
370-372.     New  York,  1886. 

33.  Ernst  Curtius,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  I,  pp.  15-20.     New  York. 

34.  Heinrich  von  Treitschke,  Politik,  Vol.  1,  p.  215.     Leipzig,  1897. 

35.  H.  J.  Mackinder,  Britain  and  the  British  Seas,  pp.  35,  40.     Lon- 
don, 1902. 

36.  William  Morris  Davis,  Physical  Geography,  pp.  115-122.     Boston, 
1899. 

37.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  95.  London,  1896-1898. 

38.  Strabo,  Book  XVTI,  chap.  I,  18.     Diodorus  Siculus,  Book  I,  chap. 
Ill,  p.  36.     London,  1814. 

39.  J.    Partsch,   Central   Europe,   pp.   96-98.     London,    1903.     Ratzel, 
Deutschland,  pp.  143-144.     Leipzig,  1898. 

40.  For  geomorphology  of  coasts,  see  William  Morris  Davis,  Physical 
Geography,  pp.  112-136,  347-383.     Boston,  1899. 

41.  Elisee  Reclus,  Europe,  Vol.  II,  p.  252.     New  York,  1886. 

42.  J.   Partsch,  Central   Europe,  p.  231.     London,   1903. 

43.  G.  G.  Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  pp.  44,  446.    London,  1904. 


COAST  PEOPLES  289 

44.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.   1012.     New  York,  1902. 
Hereford  George,  Historical  Geography  of  the  British  Empire,  pp.  278- 
279.     London,  1904. 

45.  J.  E.  Thorold  Rogers,  Six  Centuries  of  Work  and  Wages,  pp.  123- 
124.     New  York,  1884. 

46.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  148.     New  York,  1902. 

47.  Diodorus  Siculus,  Book  V,  chap.  I,  p.  304.    London,  1814.     Strabo, 
Book  V,  chap.  VI,  6,  7. 

48.  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  I,  pp.  188-189,  193-195.     New 
York,  1902-1906. 

49.  Strabo,  Book  XVI,  chap.  Ill,  4,  27.     Herodotus,  Book  I,  chap.  I; 
Book  VII,  chap.  89.     J.  T.  Brent,  The  Bahrein  Islands  of  the  Persian 
Gulf,  Proceedings  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society,  Vol.  XII,  pp.  13- 
16.     London,  1890. 

50.  George  Adam  Smith,  Historical  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,  pp. 
169-170.    New  York,  1897. 

51.  Ibid.,  pp.   179,  185,  286. 

52.  Ibid.,  pp.   127-131. 

53.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  100-102,  132-145.     Lon- 
don, 1896-1898. 

54.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  985.     New  York,  1902. 

55.  D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer  East,  pp.  84,  166.     London,  1902. 

56.  J.  Naken,  Die  Provinz  Kwangtung  und  Hire  Bevolkerung,  Peter- 
manns    Geographisclie    Mittheilungen,    Vol.    24,    pp.    409,    420.       1878. 
Ferdinand   von   Richthofen,   China,   Vol.   I,   pp.   568-569.      Berlin,   1877. 
Cathay    and    the    Way    Thither,    Vol.    I,    p.    Ixxviii.      Hakluyt    Society, 
London,  1866. 

57.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  397.     London,  1896-1898. 
Philippine  Census,  Vol.  I,  pp.  438,  481-491.     Washington,  1905. 

58.  Stanford's  Australasia,  Vol.  II,  pp.  103,  121,  126-135,  196.     Lon- 
don, 1894.     Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  II,  p.  547.     New  York, 
1902-1906. 

59.  Ibid.,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  431,  434.     Vol.  II,  p.  603. 

60.  Roscher,  National-Oekonomik  des  Handels  und  Gewerbefleisses,  pp. 
78-79,  99-100.     Stuttgart,  1899.     Capt.  A.  T.  Mahan,  Influence  of  Sea 
Power  upon  History,  pp.  26-28.     Boston,  1902. 

61.  D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer  East,  pp.  111-112,  152.     London,  1902. 

62.  Ibid.,  pp.  73-74,  139,  267. 

63.  Cathay  and  the  Way  Thither,  Vol.  I,  p.  LXXX.     Hakluyt  Society. 
London,   1866.     Helmolt,   History  of  the  World,  Vol.   II,  p.  548.  New 
York,  1902-1906. 

64.  The  Book  of  Ser  Marco  Polo,  edited  by  Sir  Henry  Yule,  Vol.  II, 
Book  III,  pp.  284,  288,  303.     New  York,  1903. 

65.  P.   Vidal   de   la  Blache,    Geographic   de   la   France,  pp.   335-337. 
Paris,  1903. 

66.  Elisee  Reclus,  Europe,  Vol.  II,  p.  252.     New  York,  1882. 

67.  Norway,   Official   Publication,   pp.   89-91,   map   p.   4.      Christiania, 
1900. 

68.  D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer  East,  pp.  114,  140,  163-164,  202,  267. 
London,  1902. 

69.  H.  F.   Tozer,  History  of  Ancient  Geography,  pp.  276-280.     Cam- 
bridge, 1897.     Strabo,  Book  XVI,  chap.  IV,  2,  19. 


390  COAST  PEOPLES 

70.  Hehnolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  433.    New  York,  1902- 
1906. 

71.  James  Bryce,  Impressions  of  South  Africa,  pp.  78-82,  99.     New 
York,  1897. 

72.  Anatole  Leroy-Beaulieu,  The  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  Vol.  I,  map  p. 

80.  New  York,  1893. 

73.  Census  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  Vol.  I,  pp.  412-413,  461,  464,  562. 
Washington,  1905. 

74.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  416. 

75.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  449.     London,  1896-1898. 

76.  P.  Ehrenreich,  Die  Eintheilung  und  Ferbreitung  der  rdlkcrbtiimme 
Brasiliens,  Petermanns  Mittheilungen,  Vol.  37,  pp.  88-89.     Gotha,  1891. 
Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  I,  p.  185,  map  p.  189.    New  York, 
1902-1906. 

77.  John  Richard  Green,  The  Making  of  England,  Vol.   I,  chap.  I. 
London,  1904. 

78.  H.  J.  Mackinder,  Britain  and  the  British  Seas,  p.  189.     London, 
1904.     W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  312-315,  map.     New  York, 
1899. 

79.  D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer  East,  p.  152.     London,  1902.     W.  Z. 
Eipley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  402,  404,  map.     New  York,  1899. 

80.  Ibid.,  pp.  117,  404-405,  409-419. 

81.  Ibid.,  pp.  206-208,  210-212.     Norway,  Official  Publication,  pp.  80- 

81.  Christiania,  1900. 

82.  Census  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  Vol.  II,  p.  52,  map  p.  50.   Wash- 
ington, 1905. 

83.  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.   175-176,   186-189.     New 
York,  1857. 

84.  Ernst  Curtius,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  I,  pp.  492-493.     New  York. 

85.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  II,  pp.  530-533.     London,  1896- 
1898. 

86.  H.  D.  Trail,  Social  England,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  367-368.     London  and 
New  York,  1895. 

87.  Twelfth  Census,  Bulletin  No.  103,  table  23.     Washington,  1902. 

88.  E.  C.  Semple,  American  History  and  Its  Geographic  Conditions,  pp. 
314  328.     Boston,  1903. 

89.  G.  G.  Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  p.  58.     London,  1904. 

90.  Roscher,  National-Oekonomik  des  Handels  und  Gewerbefleisses,  p. 
85,  Note  18.    Stuttgart,  1899. 

91.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  II,  p.  533.     London,  1896-1898. 

92.  Ibid.,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  139,  145. 

93.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  869.     New  York,  1902. 

94.  D.  G.  Brinton,  The  American  Race,  p.  107.     Philadelphia,  1901. 
H.  H.  Bancroft,  The  Native  Races,  p.  239,  footnote  p.  274.     San  Fran- 
cisco, 1886. 

95.  Josephus,  Antiquities  of  the  Jews,  Book  VIII,  chap.  II,  6,  7,  9. 

96.  J.  Scott  Keltic,  The  Partition  of  Africa,  p.  327.     London,  1895. 
Ratzel,    History    of    Mankind,    Vol.    Ill,    pp.    121-122.     London,    1896- 
1898. 

97.  Ibid.,  Vol.  in,  pp.  121,  132-133. 

98.  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  p.  239. 

99  Eleventh  Census,  Report  on  Alaska,  p.  70.    Washington,  1893. 


COAST  PEOPLES  291 

100.  Ibid.,  p.  156.    E.  E.  Scidmore,  Guidebook  to  Alaska,  p.  94.    New 
York,  1897. 

101.  Census  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  Vol.  I,  pp.  556-561,  575,  581- 
583.     Washington,  1905. 

102.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  85-86,  99-101,  map  pp.  151-152. 
New  York,  1899. 

103.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  97,  106.     New  York, 
1896-1898. 

104.  Henry  Gannett,  The  Peoples  of  the  Philippines,  in  Report  of  the 
Eighth  International  Geographic  Congress,  p.  673.     Washington,  1904. 

105.  A.  H.  Keane,  Africa,  Stanford's  Compendium,  pp.  372-376,  385- 
388.     London,  1895.     Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  402, 
456-457,  462.     New  York,  1902-1906. 

106.  H.  H.  Bancroft,  The  Native  Races,  Vol.  I,  pp.  440-441 ;  Vol.  Ill, 
pp.  325,  362.     San  Francisco,   1886.       McGee  and  Thomas,  Prehistoric 
North  America,  pp.   37-38,  78,  88-89,  95-98.     Vol.   XIX  of  History  of 
North  America.     Philadelphia,  1905. 

107.  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  IV,  p.  22.    New  York,  1857. 

108.  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  225,  226. 

109.  Census  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  Vol.  II,  pp.  34,  35.     Washing- 
ton, 1905. 

110.  Williams  and   Calvert,   Fiji   and  the  Fijians,   pp.    81-82.     New 
York,  1859. 

111.  Strabo,  Book  V,  chap.  I,  7,  8. 

112.  Strabo,  Book  IV,  chap.  VI,  1,  2;  Book  V,  chap.  I,  11. 

113.  Dietrich    Schafer,   Die   Hansestadte   und   Konig    Waldemar   von 
Ddnemarlc,  pp.  184,  189.    Jena,  1879. 

114.  W.  Deecke,  Italy,  pp.  89-91.     London,  1904. 

115.  Strabo,  Book  III,  chap.  I,  2. 

116.  Roscher,  National-Oelconomik  des  Handels  und  Gewerbefleisses,  p. 
93,  Note  1.     Stuttgart,  1899. 


CHAPTER  IX 


The  water 
a  factor 
in  man's 
mobility. 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS 

THE  water  of  the  earth's  surface,  viewed  from  the  stand- 
point of  anthropo-geography,  is  one,  whether  it  appears  as 
atmospheric  moisture,  spring,  river,  lake,  brackish  lagoon, 
enclosed  sea-basin  or  open  ocean.  Its  universal  circulation, 
from  the  falling  of  the  dews  to  the  vast  sweep  of  ocean 
current,  causes  this  inviolable  unity.  Variations  in  the 
geographical  forms  of  water  are  superficial  and  constantly 
changing;  the}'  pass  into  one  another  by  almost  impercep- 
tible gradations,  shift  their  unstable  outlines  at  the  bidding 
of  the  mobile,  restless  element.  In  contrast  to  the  land,  which 
is  marked  by  diversity  of  geologic  structure  and  geographic 
form,  the  world  of  water  is  everywhere  approximately  the 
same,  excepting  only  the  difference  in  the  mineral  composi- 
tion of  sea  water  as  opposed  to  that  of  spring  and  stream. 
Therefore,  whenever  man  has  touched  it,  it  has  moulded  him 
in  much  the  same  way,  given  the  same  direction  to  his  activ- 
ities, dictated  the  use  of  the  same  implements  and  methods 
of  navigation.  As  maritime  trader  or  colonist,  he  has  sailed 
to  remote,  unknown,  yet  familiar  coasts,  and  found  himself 
as  much  at  home  as  on  his  native  shores.  He  has  built  up 
maritime  empires,  the  centre  of  whose  dominion,  race  and 
commerce,  falls  somewhere  in  the  dividing  yet  uniting  sea. 

Man  must  be  grouped  with  the  air  and  water  as  part  of 
the  mobile  envelope  of  the  earth's  surface.  The  mobility 
which  maintains  the  unity  of  air  and  water  has  caused  the 
unity  of  the  human  race.  Abundant  facilities  of  dispersal 
often  give  animal  forms  a  wide  or  cosmopolitan  distribution. 
Man,  by  appropriating  the  mobile  forces  in  the  air  and  water 
to  increase  his  own  powers  of  locomotion,  has  become  a  cos- 
mopolitan being,  and  made  the  human  race  reflect  the  unity 
of  atmosphere  and  hydrosphere. 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS  293 

Always  the  eternal  unrest  of  the  moving  waters  has 
knocked  at  the  door  of  human  inertia  to  arouse  the  sleeper 
within ;  always  the  flow  of  stream  and  the  ebb  of  tide  have 
sooner  or  later  stirred  the  curiosity  of  the  land-born  barba- 
rian about  the  unseen  destination  of  these  marching  waters. 
Rivers  by  the  mere  force  of  gravity  have  carried  him  to  the 
shores  of  their  common  ocean,  and  placed  him  on  this  high- 
way of  the  world.  Then  from  his  sea-girt  home,  whether 
island  or  continent,  he  has  timidly  or  involuntarily  followed 
the  track  which  headland-dotted  coast,  or  ocean  current,  or 
monsoon,  or  trade  wind  marked  out  for  him  across  the  path- 
less waters,  so  that  at  the  gray  dawn  of  history  he  appears 
as  a  cosmopolite,  occupying  every  part  of  the  habitable  earth. 

These  sporadic  oversea  wanderings,  with  intervals  of  cen- 
turies or  milleniums  between,  opened  to  his  occupancy 
strange  and  remote  lands,  in  whose  isolation  and  new  environ- 
ment he  developed  fresh  variations  of  mind,  body  and  cul- 
tural achievements,  to  arm  him  with  new  weapons  in  the 
struggle  for  existence.  The  sea  which  brought  him  bars 
him  for  a  few  ages  from  his  old  home,  till  the  tradition  of 
his  coming  even  is  lost.  Then  with  higher  nautical  develop- 
ment, the  sea  loses  its  barrier  nature ;  movements  of  people 
and  trade  recross  its  surface  to  unite  those  who  have  been 
long  severed  and  much  differentiated  in  their  mutual  remote- 
ness. The  ensuing  friction  and  mingling  weed  out  the  less 
fit  variations  of  each,  and  combine  in  the  new  race  the  quali- 
ties able  to  fortify  a  higher  type  of  man.  Not  only  seas 
and  oceans,  but  also  mountains  and  deserts  serve  to  isolate 
the  migrant  people  who  once  has  crossed  them ;  but  wastes 
of  water  raise  up  the  most  effective  barriers. 

The  transformation  of  the  ocean  into  a  highway  by  the  Oceans 
development  of  navigation  is  a  late  occurrence  in  the  history  and  seas 
of  man  and  is  perhaps  the  highest  phase  of  his  adaptation  to  m  univer' 
environment,  because  an  adaptation  which  has  placed  at  his  K 
disposal  that  vast  water  area  constituting  three-fourths  of 
the  earth's  surface  from  which  he  had  previously  been  ex- 
cluded.    Moreover,  it  was  adaptation  to  an  alien  and  hostile 
element,  whose  violent  displays  of  power  recurrently  stimu- 
lated  the   human    adjustment   between   attack   and   defense. 


294  OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS 

Because  adaptation  to  the  sea  has  been  vastly  more  difficult 
than  to  the  land,  commensurate  with  the  harder  struggle  it 
has  brought  greater  intellectual  and  material  rewards. 
This  conquest  of  the  sea  is  entitled  to  a  peculiarly  high 
place  in  history,  because  it  has  contributed  to  the  union  of 
the  various  peoples  of  the  world,  has  formed  a  significant 
part  of  the  history  of  man,  whether  that  history  is  economic, 
social,  political  or  intellectual.  Hence  history  has  always 
staged  its  most  dramatic  acts  upon  the  margin  of  seas  and 
oceans ;  here  always  the  plot  thickens  and  gives  promise  of 
striking  development.  Rome  of  the  seven  hills  pales  before 
England  of  the  "Seven  Seas." 

Ttie  sea  Universal  history  loses  half  its  import,  remains  an  aggre- 

in  universal  gate  of  parts,  fails  to  yield  its  significance  as  a  whole,  if  it 
does  not  continually  take  into  account  the  unifying  factor 
of  the  seas.  Indeed,  no  history  is  entitled  to  the  name  of 
universal  unless  it  includes  a  record  of  human  movements 
and  activities  on  the  ocean,  side  by  side  with  those  on  the 
land.  Our  school  text-books  in  geography  present  a  deplor- 
able hiatus,  because  they  fail  to  make  a  definite  study  of  the 
oceans  over  which  man  explores  and  colonizes  and  trades,  as 
well  as  the  land  on  which  he  plants  and  builds  and  sleeps. 

The  striking  fact  about  the  great  World  Ocean  to-day  is 
the  manifold  relations  which  it  has  established  between  the 
dwellers  on  its  various  coasts.  Marine  cables,  steamer  and 
sailing  routes  combine  to  form  a  network  of  paths  across 
the  vast  commons  of  the  deep.  Over  these  the  commercial, 
political,  intellectual,  or  even  purely  migrant  activities  of 
human  life  move  from  continent  to  continent.  The  distinctive 
value  of  the  sea  is  that  it  promotes  many-sided  relations  as 
opposed  to  the  one-sided  relation  of  the  land.  France  on 
her  eastern  frontier  comes  into  contact  with  people  of  kin- 
dred stock,  living  under  similar  conditions  of  climate  and 
soil  to  her  own ;  on  her  maritime  border  she  is  open  to  inter- 
mittent intercourse  with  all  continents  and  climes  and  races 
of  the  world.  To  this  sea  border  must  be  ascribed  the  share 
that  France  has  taken  in  the  history  of  North  and  South 
America,  the  West  Indies,  North  and  Equatorial  Africa, 
India,  China  and  the  South  Seas.  So  we  find  the  great 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS  295 

maritime  peoples  of  the  world,  from  the  Phoenicians  to  the 
English,  each  figuring  in  the  history  of  the  world  of  its 
day,  and  helping  weave  into  a  web  of  universal  history  the 
stories  of  its  various  parts. 

Man's  normal  contact  with  the  sea  is  registered  in  his  Origin  of 
nautical  achievements.  The  invention  of  the  first  primitive  navigat1on 
means  of  navigation,  suggested  by  a  floating  log  or  bloated 
body  of  a  dead  animal,  must  have  been  an  early  achievement 
of  a  great  many  peoples  who  lived  near  the  water,  or  who 
in  the  course  of  their  wanderings  found  their  progress 
obstructed  by  rivers ;  it  belongs  to  a  large  class  of  similar 
discoveries  which  answer  urgent  and  constantly  recurring 
needs.  It  was,  in  all  probability,  often  made  and  as  often 
lost  again,  until  a  growing  habit  of  venturing  beyond  shore 
or  river  bank  in  search  of  better  fishing,  or  of  using  the 
easy  open  waterways  through  the  thick  tangle  of  a  primeval 
forest  to  reach  fresh  hunting  grounds,  established  it  as  a 
permanent  acquisition. 

The  first  devices  were  simply  floats  or  rafts,  made  of  Primitive 
light  wood,  reeds,  or  the  hollow  stems  of  plants  woven  to-  forma, 
gether  and  often  buoyed  up  by  the  inflated  skins  of  animals. 
Floats  of  this  character  still  survive  among  various  peoples, 
especially  in  poorly  timbered  lands.  The  skin  rafts  which 
for  ages  have  been  the  chief  means  of  downstream  traffic  on 
the  rivers  of  Mesopotamia,  consist  of  a  square  frame-work 
of  interwoven  reeds  and  branches,  supported  by  the  inflated 
skins  of  sheep  and  goats  ;*  they  are  guided  by  oars  and  poles 
down  or  across  the  current.  These  were  the  primitive  means 
by  which  Layard  transported  his  winged  bull  from  the  ruins 
of  Nineveh  down  to  the  Persian  Gulf,  and  they  were  the  same 
which  he  found  on  the  bas-reliefs  of  the  ancient  capital,  show- 
ing the  methods  of  navigation  three  thousand  years  ago.2 
Similar  skin  rafts  serve  as  ferry  boats  on  the  Sutlej,  Shajok 
and  other  head  streams  of  the  Indus.3  They  reappear  in 
Africa  as  the  only  form  of  ferry  used  by  the  Moors  on  the 
River  Morbeya  in  Morocco ;  on  the  Nile,  where  the  inflated 
skins  are  supplanted  by  earthen  pots  ;*  and  on  the  Yo  River 
of  semi-arid  Sudan,  where  the  platform  is  made  of  reeds 
and  is  buoyed  up  by  calabashes  fastened  beneath.5 


296 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS 


Primitive 
craft  in 
arid  lands. 


In  treeless  lands,  reeds  growing  on  the  margins  of  streams 
and  lakes  are  utilized  for  the  construction  of  boats.  The 
Buduma  islanders  of  Lake  Chad  use  clumsy  skiffs  eighteen 
feet  long,  made  of  hollow  reeds  tied  into  bundles  and  then 
lashed  together  in  a  way  to  form  a  slight  cavity  on  top.8 
In  the  earliest  period  of  Egyptian  history  this  type  of  boat 
with  slight  variations  was  used  in  the  papyrus  marshes  of 
the  Nile,7  and  it  reappears  as  the  ambatch  boat  which 
Schweinfurth  observed  on  the  upper  White  Nile.8  It  is  in 
use  far  away  among  the  Sayads  or  Fowlers,  who  inhabit 
the  reed-grown  rim  of  the  Sistan  Lake  in  arid  Persia.9 
As  the  Peruvian  balsa,  it  has  been  the  regular  means  of  water 
travel  on  Lake  Titicaca  since  the  time  of  the  Incas,  and  in 
more  primitive  form  it  appears  among  the  Shoshone  Indians 
of  the  Snake  River  Valley  of  Idaho,  who  used  this  device  in 
their  treeless  land  to  cross  the  streams,  when  the  water  was 
too  cold  for  swimming.10  Still  cruder  rafts  of  reeds,  with- 
out approach  to  boat  form,  were  the  sole  vehicles  of  navi- 
gation among  the  backward  Indians  of  San  Francisco  Bay, 
and  were  the  prevailing  craft  among  the  coast  Indians 
farther  south  and  about  the  Gulf  of  Lower  California.11 
Trees  abounded ;  but  these  remnant  tribes  of  low  intelligence, 
probably  recent  arrivals  on  the  coast  from  the  interior, 
equipped  only  with  instruments  of  bone  and  stone,  found  the 
difficulty  of  working  with  wood  prohibitive. 

The  second  step  in  the  elaboration  of  water  conveyance 
was  made  when  mere  flotation  was  succeeded  by  various 
devices  to  secure  displacement.  The  evolution  is  obvious. 
The  primitive  raftsman  of  the  Mesopotamian  rivers  wove 
his  willow  boughs  and  osiers  into  a  large,  round  basket  form, 
covered  it  with  closely  sewn  skins  to  render  it  water-tight, 
and  in  it  floated  with  his  merchandise  down  the  swift  cur- 
rent from  Armenia  to  Babylon.  These  were  the  boats  which 
Herodotus  saw  on  the  Euphrates,12  and  which  survive 
to-day.13  According  to  Pliny,  the  ancient  Britons  used  a 
similar  craft,  framed  of  wicker-work  and  covered  with  hide, 
in  which  the}7  crossed  the  English  and  Irish  channels  to  visit 
their  kinsfolk  on  the  opposite  shores.  This  skin  boat  or 
coracle  or  currach  still  survives  on  the  rivers  of  Wales  and 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS  297 

the  west  coast  of  Ireland,  where  it  is  used  by  the  fishermen 
and  considered  the  safest  craft  for  stormy  weather.14  It 
recalls  the  "bull-skin  boat"  used  in  pioneer  days  on  the 
rivers  of  our  western  plains,  and  the  skiffs  serving  as  pas- 
senger ferries  to-day  on  the  rivers  of  eastern  Tibet.15  It 
reappears  among  the  Arikara  Indians  of  the  upper 
Missouri,18  and  the  South  American  tribes  of  the  Gran 
Chaco.17  The  first  wooden  boat  was  made  of  a  tree  trunk, 
hollowed  out  either  by  fire  or  axe.  The  wide  geographical 
distribution  of  the  dug-out  and  its  survival  in  isolated  regions 
of  highly  civilized  lands  point  it  out  as  one  of  those  neces- 
sary and  obvious  inventions  that  must  have  been  made  inde- 
pendently in  various  parts  of  the  world. 

The  quieter  water  of  rivers  and  lakes  offered  the  most  Relation 
favorable  conditions  for  the  feeble  beginnings  of  navigation,  ° 
but  the  step  from  inland  to  marine  navigation  was  not  always 
taken.  The  Egyptians,  who  had  well-constructed  river  and 
marine  boats,  resigned  their  maritime  commerce  to  Phoani- 
cians  and  Greeks,  probably,  as  has  been  shown,  because  the 
silted  channels  and  swamps  of  the  outer  Nile  delta  held  them 
at  arm's  length  from  the  sea.  Similarly  the  equatorial 
lakes  of  Central  Africa  have  proved  fair  schools  of  naviga- 
tion, where  the  art  has  passed  the  initial  stages  of  develop- 
ment. The  kingdom  of  Uganda  on  Victoria  Nyanza,  at  the 
time  of  Stanley's  visit,  could  muster  a  war  fleet  of  325  boats, 
a  hundred  of  them  measuring  from  fifty  to  seventy  feet  in 
length ;  the  largest  were  manned  by  a  crew  of  sixty-four  pad- 
dlers  and  could  carry  as  many  more  fighting  men.18  The  long 
plateau  course  of  the  mighty  Congo  has  bred  a  race  of  river 
navigators,  issuing  from  their  riparian  villages  to  attack  the 
traveler  in  big  flotillas  of  canoes  ranging  from  fifty  to  eighty- 
five  feet  in  length,  the  largest  of  them  driven  through  the  water 
by  eighty  paddlers  and  steered  by  eight  more  paddles  in 
the  stern.19  But  the  Congo  and  lake  boats  are  barred  from 
the  coast  by  a  series  of  cataracts,  which  mark  the  passage 
of  the  drainage  streams  down  the  escarpment  of  the  plateau. 

There  are  peoples  without  boats  or  rafts  of  any  descrip-  Retarded 
tion.   Among  this  class  are  the  Central  Australians,  Bushmen,  navigation. 
Hottentots  and  Kaffirs  of  arid  South  Africa,20  and  with  few 


298 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS 


Regions  of 

advanced 

navigation. 


exceptions  also  the  Damaras.  Even  the  coast  members  of 
these  tribes  only  wade  out  into  the  shallow  water  on  the 
beach  to  spear  fish.  The  traveler  moving  northward  from 
Cape  Town  through  South  Africa,  across  its  few  scant  rivers, 
goes  all  the  way  to  Ngami  Lake  before  he  sees  anything 
resembling  a  canoe,  and  then  only  a  rude  dugout.  Still 
greater  is  the  number  of  people  who,  though  inhabiting  well 
indented  coasts,  make  little  use  of  contact  with  the  sea. 
Navigation,  unknown  to  many  Australian  coast  tribes,  is 
limited  to  miserable  rafts  of  mangrove  branches  on  the  north- 
west seaboard,  and  to  imperfect  bark  canoes  with  short 
paddles  on  the  south ;  only  in  the  north  where  Malayan  in- 
fluences are  apparent  does  the  hollowed  tree-stem  with 
outrigger  appear.21  This  retardation  is  not  due  to  fear, 
because  the  South  Australian  native,  like  the  Fuegian,  ven- 
tures several  miles  out  to  sea  in  his  frail  canoe;  it  is  due  to 
that  deep-seated  inertia  which  characterizes  all  primitive 
races,  and  for  which  the  remote,  outlying  location  of  penin- 
sular South  America,  Southern  Africa  and  Australia,  before 
the  arrival  of  the  Europeans,  afforded  no  antidote  in  the 
form  of  stimulating  contact  with  other  peoples.  But  the 
Irish,  who  started  abreast  of  the  other  northern  Celts  in 
nautical  efficiency,  who  had  advantages  of  proximity  to  other 
shores,  and  in  the  early  centuries  of  their  history  sailed  to 
the  far-away  Faroes  and  even  to  Iceland,  peopled  southern 
Scotland  by  an  oversea  emigration,  made  piratical  descents 
upon  the  English  coast,  and  in  turn  received  colonies  of 
bold  Scandinavian  mariners,  suffered  an  arrested  develop- 
ment in  navigation,  and  failed  to  become  a  sea-faring  folk. 

Turning  from  these  regions  of  merely  rudimentary  nav- 
igation and  inquiring  where  the  highest  efficiency  in  the 
art  was  attained  before  the  spread  of  Mediterranean  and 
European  civilization,  we  find  that  this  distinction  belongs 
to  the  great  island  world  of  the  Pacific  and  to  the  neighbor- 
ing lands  of  the  Indian  Ocean.  Sailing  vessels  and  outrigger 
boats  of  native  design  and  construction  characterize  the 
whole  sea-washed  area  of  Indo-Malaysian  civilization  from 
Malacca  to  the  outermost  isles  of  the  Pacific.  The  eastern 
rim  of  Asia,  also,  belongs  to  this  wide  domain  of  nautical 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS  299 

efficiency,  and  the  coast  Indians  of  southern  Alaska  and 
British  Columbia  may  possibly  represent  an  eastern  spur 
of  the  same,22  thrown  out  in  very  remote  times  and  main- 
tained by  the  advantageous  geographic  conditions  of  that 
indented,  mountainous  coast.  Adjoining  this  area  on  the 
north  is  the  long-drawn  Arctic  seaboard  of  the  Eskimo,  who 
unaided  have  developed  in  their  sealskin  kayak  and  bidarka 
sea-going  craft  unsurpassed  for  the  purposes  of  marine 
hunting  and  fishing,  and  who  display  a  fearlessness  and 
endurance  born  of  long  and  enforced  intimacy  with  the  deep. 
Driven  by  the  frozen  deserts  of  his  home  to  seek  his  food 
chiefly  in  the  water,  the  Eskimo,  nevertheless,  finds  his  access 
to  the  sea  barred  for  long  months  of  winter  by  the  jagged 
ice-pack  along  the  shore. 

The  highest  degree  of  intimacy  is  developed  in  that  vast  Geogra- 
island-strewn  stretch  of  the  Pacific  constituting  Oceanica.23  ^ 
Here  where  a  mild  climate  enables  the  boatman  race  to  make  ™ 
a  companion  of  the  deep,  where  every  landscape  is  a  sea- 
scape, where  every  diplomatic  visit  or  war  campaign,  every 
trading  journey  or  search  for  new  coco-palm  plantation 
means  a  voyage  beyond  the  narrow  confines  of  the  home 
island,  there  dwells  a  race  whose  splendid  chest  and  arm 
muscles  were  developed  in  the  gymnasium  of  the  sea ;  who, 
living  on  a  paltry  515,000  square  miles  (1,320,300  square 
kilometers)  of  scattered  fragments  of  land,  but  roaming  over 
an  ocean  area  of  twenty-five  million  square  miles,  are  not 
more  at  home  in  their  palm-wreathed  islets  than  on  the  en- 
compassing deep.  Migrations,  voluntary  and  involuntary, 
make  up  their  history.  Their  trained  sense  of  locality, 
enabling  them  to  make  voyages  several  hundred  miles  from 
home,  has  been  mentioned  by  various  explorers  in  Polynesia. 
The  Marshall  Islanders  set  down  their  geographical  knowl- 
edge in  maps  which  are  fairly  correct  as  to  bearings  but  not 
as  to  distances.  The  Ralick  Islanders  of  this  group  make 
charts  which  include  islands,  routes  and  currents.24  Captain 
Cook  was  impressed  by  the  geographical  knowledge  of  the 
people  of  the  South  Seas.  A  native  Tahitian  made  for  him 
a  chart  containing  seventy-four  islands,  and  gave  an  account 
of  nearly  sixty  more.25  Information  and  directions  supplied 


300 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS 


Mediterra- 
nean ver- 
sus Atlan- 
tic sea- 
manship. 


by  natives  have  aided  white  explorers  to  many  discoveries  in 
these  waters.  Quiros,  visiting  the  Duff  Islands  in  1606,  learned 
the  location  of  Ticopia,  one  of  the  New  Hebrides  group,  three 
hundred  miles  away.  Not  only  the  excellent  seamanship  and 
the  related  pelagic  fishing  of  the  Polynesians  bear  the  stamp 
of  their  predominant  water  environment ;  their  mythology, 
their  conception  of  a  future  state,  the  germs  of  their  astro- 
nomical science,  are  all  born  of  the  sea. 

Though  the  people  living  on  the  uttermost  boundaries  of 
this  island  world  are  6,000  miles  (or  10,000  kilometers) 
apart,  and  might  be  expected  to  be  differentiated  by  the 
isolation  of  their  island  habitats,  nevertheless  they  all  have 
the  same  fundamental  characteristics  of  physique,  language 
and  culture  from  Guam  to  Easter  Isle,  reflecting  in  their 
unity  the  oneness  of  the  encompassing  ocean  over  which  they 
circulate.28 

Midway  between  these  semi-aquatic  Polynesians  and  those 
Arctic  tribes  who  are  forced  out  upon  the  deep,  to  struggle 
with  it  rather  than  associate  with  it,  we  find  the  inhabitants 
of  the  Mediterranean  islands  and  peninsulas,  who  are  favored 
by  the  mild  climate  and  the  tideless,  fogless,  stormless  char- 
acter of  their  sea.  While  such  a  body  of  water  invites  inti- 
macy, it  does  not  breed  a  hardy  or  bold  race  of  navigators ;  it 
is  a  nursery,  scarcely  a  training  school.  Therefore,  except 
for  the  far-famed  Dalmatian  sailors,  who  for  centuries  have 
faced  the  storms  sweeping  down  from  the  Dinaric  Alps  over 
the  turbulent  surface  of  the  Adriatic,  Mediterranean  seaman- 
ship does  not  command  general  confidence  on  the  high  seas. 
Therefore  it  is  the  German,  English  and  Dutch  steamship 
lines  that  are  to-day  the  chief  ocean  carriers  from  Italian 
ports  to  East  Africa,  Asia,  Australia,  North  and  South 
America,  despite  the  presence  of  native  lines  running  from 
Genoa  to  Buenos  Ayres,  Montevideo  and  New  York;  just 
as  it  was  the  Atlantic  states  of  Europe,  and  only  these  and 
all  of  these,  except  Germany,  who,  trained  to  venture  out 
into  the  fogs  and  storms  and  unmarked  paths  of  the  mare 
tenebrosum,  participated  in  the  early  voyages  to  the  Amer- 
icas. One  after  the  other  they  came — Norwegians,  Span- 
iards, Portuguese,  English,  French,  Dutch,  Swedes  and 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS  301 

Danes.  The  anthropo-geographical  principle  is  not  invali- 
dated by  the  fact  that  Spain  and  England  were  guided  in 
their  initial  trans-Atlantic  voyages  by  Italian  navigators, 
like  Columbus,  Cabot  and  Amerigo  Vespucci.  The  long  mar- 
itime experience  of  Italy  and  its  commercial  relations  with 
the  Orient,  reaching  back  into  ancient  times,  furnished 
abundant  material  for  the  researches  and  speculations  of 
such  practical  theorists;  but  Italy's  location  fixed  the  shores 
of  the  Mediterranean  as  her  natural  horizon,  narrowed  her 
vision  to  its  shorter  radius.  Her  obvious  interest  in  the 
preservation  of  the  old  routes  to  the  Orient  made  her  turn  a 
deaf  ear  to  plans  aiming  to  divert  European  commerce  to 
trans-Atlantic  routes.  Italy's  entrance  upon  the  high  seas 
was,  therefore,  reluctant  and  late,  retarded  by  the  necessity 
of  outgrowing  the  old  circumscribed  outlook  of  the  enclosed 
basin  before  adopting  the  wider  vision  of  the  open  ocean. 
Venice  and  Genoa  were  crippled  not  only  by  the  discovery 
of  the  sea  route  to  India,  but  also  by  their  adherence  to  old 
thalassic  means  and  methods  of  navigation  inadequate  for 
the  high  seas.27  However,  these  Mediterranean  sea  folk  are 
being  gradually  drawn  out  of  their  seclusion,  as  is  proved  by 
the  increase  of  Italian  oceanic  lines  and  the  recent  installa- 
tion of  an  Hellenic  steamship  line  between  Piraeus  and  New 
York. 

The   size   of   a   sea   or   ocean    is  a    definite    factor   in   its  Three 
power    to    attract    or    repel    maritime    ventures,    especially 

In   the   earlier  stages   of   nautical   development.      A   broken,  8   ^ 

maritime 
indented     coast    means    not    only    a    longer    and    broader  develop- 

zone  of  contact  between  the  inhabitants  and  the  sea ;  it  means  ment. 
also  the  nreaking  up  of  the  adjacent  expanse  of  water  into 
so  many  alcoves,  in  which  fisherman,  trader  and  colonist 
may  become  at  home,  and  prepare  for  maritime  ventures 
farther  afield.  The  enclosed  or  marginal  sea  tempts  earlier 
because  it  can  be  compassed  by  coastwise  navigation ;  then 
by  the  proximity  of  its  opposite  shores  and  its  usual  generous 
equipment  with  islands,  the  next  step  to  crosswise  navigation 
is  encouraged.  For  the  earliest  stages  of  maritime  develop- 
ment, only  the  smaller  articulations  of  the  coast  and  the 
inshore  fringe  of  sea  inlets  count.  This  is  shown  in  the 


302 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS 


Influence 
of  en- 
closed seas 
upon  navi- 
gation. 


primitive  voyages  of  the  Greeks,  before  they  had  ventured 
into  the  Euxine  or  west  of  the  forbidding  Cape  Malia;  and 
in  the  "inside  passage"  navigation  of  the  Indians  of  southern 
Alaska,  British  Columbia,  and  Chile,  who  have  never 
stretched  their  nautical  ventures  beyond  the  outermost  rocks 
of  their  skerry-walled  coast. 

A  second  stage  is  reached  when  an  enclosed  basin  is  at 
hand  to  widen  the  maritime  horizon,  and  when  this  larger 
field  is  exploited  in  all  its  commercial,  colonial  and  indus- 
trial possibilities,  as  was  done  by  the  Phoenicians  and  Greeks 
in  the  Mediterranean,  the  Hanse  Towns  in  the  Baltic,  the 
Dutch  and  English  in  the  North  Sea.  The  third  and  final 
stage  is  reached  when  the  nursery  of  the  inshore  estuary  or 
gulf  and  the  elementary  school  of  the  enclosed  basin  are  in 
turn  outgrown,  and  the  larger  maritime  spirit  moves  on  to 
the  open  ocean  for  its  field  of  operation.  It  is  a  significant 
fact  that  the  Norse,  bred  to  the  water  in  their  fiords  and 
channels  behind  their  protecting  "skerry-wall,"  then  trained 
in  the  stormy  basins  of  the  North  and  Irish  Seas,  were 
naturally  the  first  people  of  Europe  to  cross  the  Atlantic, 
because  the  Atlantic  of  their  shores,  narrowing  like  all  oceans 
and  seas  toward  the  north,  assumes  almost  the  character  of 
an  enclosed  basin.  The  distance  from  Norway  to  Green- 
land is  only  1,800  miles,  little  more  than  that  across  the 
Arabian  Sea  between  Africa  and  India.  We  trace,  therefore, 
a  certain  analogy  between  the  physical  subdivisions  of  the 
world  of  water  into  inlet,  marginal  sea  and  ocean,  and  the 
anthropo-geographical  gradations  in  maritime  development. 

The  enclosed  or  marginal  sea  seems  a  necessary  condition 
for  the  advance  beyond  coastwise  navigation  and  the  much 
later  step  to  the  open  ocean.  Continents  without  them,  like 
Africa,  except  for  its  frontage  upon  the  Mediterranean  and 
the  Red  Sea,  have  shown  no  native  initiative  in  maritime 
enterprise.  Africa  was  further  cursed  by  the  mockery  of 
desert  coasts  along  most  of  her  scant  thalassic  shores.  In 
the  Americas,  we  find  the  native  races  compassing  a  wide 
maritime  field  only  in  the  Arctic,  where  the  fragmentary 
character  of  the  continent  breaks  up  the  ocean  into  Hudson's 
Buy,  Davis  Strait,  Baffin  Bay,  Gulf  of  Boothia,  Melville 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS  303 

Sound  and  Bering  Sea;  and  in  the  American  Mediterranean 
of  the  Caribbean  Sea  and  Gulf  of  Mexico.  The  excellent 
seamanship  developed  in  the  archipelagoes  of  southern 
Alaska  and  Chile  remained  abortive  for  maritime  expansion, 
despite  a  paucity  of  local  resources  and  the  spur  of  hunger, 
owing  to  the  lack  of  a  marginal  sea;  but  in  the  Caribbean 
basin,  the  Arawaks  and  later  the  Caribs  spread  from  the 
southern  mainland  as  far  as  Cuba.28  [See  map  page  101.] 

Enclosed  or  marginal  seas  were  historically  the  most  im-  Enclosed 
portant  sections  of  the  ocean  prior  to  1492.  Apart  from  seas  ^ 
the  widening  of  the  maritime  horizon  which  they  give  to  . 
their  bordering  people,  each  has  the  further  advantage  of  cuitural 
constituting  an  area  of  close  vicinal  grouping  and  constant  assimila- 
interchange  of  cultural  achievements,  by  which  the  civiliza-  tion. 
tion  of  the  whole  basin  tends  to  become  elevated  and  unified. 
This  unification  frequently  extends  to  race  also,  owing  to 
the  rapidity  of  maritime  expansion  and  the  tendency  to 
ethnic  amalgamation  characteristic  of  all  coast  regions.  We 
recognize  an  area  of  Mediterranean  civilization  from  the 
Isthmus  of  Suez  to  the  Sacred  Promontory  of  Portugal,  and 
in  this  area  a  long-headed,  brunette  Mediterranean  race, 
clearly  unified  as  to  stock,  despite  local  differentiations  of 
culture,  languages  and  nations  in  the  various  islands,  penin- 
sulas and  other  segregated  coastal  regions  of  this  sea.29  The 
basin  appears  therefore  as  an  historical  whole;  for  in  it  a 
certain  group  of  peoples  concentrated  their  common  efforts, 
which  crossed  and  criss-crossed  from  shore  to  shore.  Phoeni- 
cia's  trade  ranged  westward  to  the  outer  coasts  of  Spain, 
and  later  Barcelona's  maritime  enterprises  reached  east  to 
the  Levant.  Greece's  commercial  and  colonial  relations  era- 
braced  the  Crimea  and  the  mouth  of  the  Rhone,  and  Genoa's 
extended  east  to  the  Crimea  again.  The  Saracens,  on 
reaching  the  Mediterranean  edge  of  the  Arabian  peninsula, 
swept  the  southern  coasts  and  islands,  swung  up  the  western 
rim  of  the  basin  to  the  foot  of  the  Pyrenees,  and  taught 
the  sluggish  Spaniards  the  art  of  irrigation  practiced  on 
the  garden  slopes  of  Yemen.  The  ships  of  the  Crusaders 
from  Venice,  Genoa  and  Marseilles  anchored  in  the  ports  of 
Mohammedanized  Syria,  brought  the  symbol  of  the  cross 


304 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS 


North  Sea 
and  Baltic 
basins. 


Bering 
Sea. 


back  to  its  birthplace  in  Jerusalem,  but  carried  away  with 
them  countless  suggestions  from  the  finished  industries  of 
the  East.  Here  was  give  and  take,  expansion  and  counter- 
expansion,  conquest  and  expulsion,  all  together  making  up 
a  great  sum  of  reciprocal  relations  embracing  the  whole 
basin,  the  outcome  of  that  close  geographical  connection 
which  every  sharply  defined  sea  establishes  between  the 
coasts  which  it  washes. 

The  same  thing  has  come  to  pass  in  the  North  Sea. 
Originally  Celtic  on  its  western  or  British  side,  as  opposed 
to  its  eastern  or  Germanic  coast,  it  has  been  wholly  Teuton- 
ized  on  that  flank  also  from  the  Strait  of  Dover  to  the  Firth 
of  Tay,  and  sprinkled  with  Scandinavian  settlers  from  the 
Firth  of  Tay  northward  to  Caithness.30  The  eleventh  cen- 
tury saw  this  ethnic  unification  achieved,  and  the  end  of  the 
Middle  Ages  witnessed  the  diffusion  of  the  elements  of  a 
common  civilization  through  the  agency  of  commerce  from 
Bruges  to  Bergen.  The  Baltic,  originally  Teutonic  only  on 
its  northern  and  western  shores,  has  in  historical  times  be- 
come almost  wholly  Teutonic,  including  even  the  seaboard  of 
Finland  and  much  of  the  coast  provinces  of  Russia.31  Unifi- 
cation of  civilization  attended  this  unification  of  race.  In 
its  period  of  greatest  historical  significance  from  the  twelfth 
to  the  seventeenth  century,  the  Baltic  played  the  role  of  a 
northern  Mediterranean.32  The  countless  shuttles  of  the  Hanse 
ships  wove  a  web  of  commercial  intercourse  between  its  remot- 
est shores.  Novgorod  and  Abo  were  in  constant  communica- 
tion with  Liibeck  and  Stralsund;33  and  Wisby,  on  the  island 
of  Gotland  at  the  great  crossroads  of  the  Baltic,3*  had  the 
focal  significance  of  the  Piraeus  in  ancient  Aegean  trade. 

If  we  turn  to  Asia,  we  find  that  even  the  unfavorable 
Arctic  location  of  Bering  Sea  has  been  unable  to  rob  it 
entirely  of  historical  significance.  This  is  the  one  spot  wheru 
a  native  American  race  has  transplanted  itself  by  its  natural 
expansion  to  Asiatic  shores.  The  circular  rim  and  island- 
dotted  surface  have  guided  Eskimo  emigrants  to  the  coast 
of  the  Chukchian  Peninsula,  where  they  have  become  partly 
assimilated  in  dress  and  language  to  the  local  Chukches.85 
The  same  conditions  also  facilitated  the  passage  of  a  few 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS  305 

Chukches  across  Bering  Strait  to  the  Alaskan  side.  At 
Pak  (or  Peek)  on  East  Cape  and  on  Diomed  Island,  situated 
in  the  narrowest  part  of  Bering  Strait,  are  the  great  inter- 
continental markets  of  the  polar  tribes.  Here  American  furs 
have  for  many  decades  been  exchanged  for  the  reindeer  skins 
of  northern  Siberia  and  Russian  goods  from  far-away  Mos- 
cow.36 Only  the  enclosed  character  of  the  sea,  reported  by 
the  Danish  explorer  Vitus  Bering,  tempted  the  land-bred 
Russians,  who  reached  the  northeastern  coast  of  Siberia  at 
the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  to  launch  their  leaky 
boats  of  unseasoned  timber,  push  across  to  the  American  con- 
tinent, and  make  this  whole  Bering  basin  a  Russian  sea;37  just 
as  a  few  decades  before,  when  land  exploration  of  Kamchatka 
had  revealed  the  enclosed  character  of  the  Sea  of  Okhotsk, 
the  Russian  pioneers  took  a  straight  course  across  the 
water  to  their  Pacific  outpost  of  Petropavlovsk  near  the 
southern  end  of  the  peninsula.  But  even  before  the  coming 
of  the  Slavs  to  its  shores,  the  Sea  of  Okhotsk  seems  to  have 
been  an  area  of  native  commercial  and  ethnic  intercourse 
from  the  Amur  River  in  Siberia  in  a  half  circle  to  the  east, 
through  Sakhalin,  Yezo,  the  Kurile  Islands  and  southern 
Kamchatka,38  noticeably  where  the  rim  of  the  basin  pre- 
sented the  scantiest  supply  of  land  and  where,  therefore,  its 
meager  resources  had  to  be  eked  out  by  fisheries  and  trade 
on  the  sea. 

On  the  southwest  margin  of  Asia,  the  Red  Sea,  despite  Rcd 
its  desert  shores,  has  maintained  the  influence  of  its  inter-  basm- 
continental  location  and  linked  the  neighboring  elements  of 
Africa  and  Asia.  Identity  of  climatic  conditions  on  both 
sides  of  this  long  rift  valley  has  facilitated  ethnic  exchanges, 
and  made  it  the  center  of  what  Ratzel  calls  the  "Red  Sea 
group  of  peoples,"  related  in  race  and  culture.39  The  great 
ethnic  solvent  here  has  been  Semitic.  Under  the  spur  of 
Islam,  the  Arabs  by  1514  had  made  the  Red  Sea  an  Arabian 
and  Mohammedan  sea.  They  had  their  towns  or  trading 
stations  at  Zeila  on  the  African  side  of  the  Strait  of  Bab-el- 
Mandeb,  at  Dalaqua,  the  port  of  Abyssinia,  at  Massowa, 
Suakin,  and  other  towns,  so  that  this  coast  too  was  called 
Arabia  Felix.40 


306 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS 


by  ethnic 
kinship. 


Assimilation  Vicinal  location  about  an  enclosed  basin  produces  more 
facilitated  rapidly  a  unification  of  race  and  culture,  when  some 
ethnic  relationship  and  affinity  already  exists  among  the 
peoples  inhabiting  its  shores.  As  in  the  ancient  and  mcdi*  v.il 
Mediterranean,  so  in  the  Yellow  Sea  of  Asia,  the  .working 
of  this  principle  is  apparent.  The  presence  along  its  coasts 
of  divergent  but  kindred  peoples  like  the  Chinese,  Koreans 
and  Japanese,  allowed  these  to  be  easily  assimilated  to  a 
Yellow  Sea  race  and  to  absorb  quickly  any  later  infusion, 
like  that  of  the  Tatars  and  Manchus.  China,  by  reason 
of  its  larger  area,  long-drawn  coast,  massive  population, 
and  early  civilization,  was  the  dominant  factor  in  this  basin ; 
Korea  and  Japan  were  its  culture  colonies — a  fact  that 
justifies  the  phrase  calling  "China  the  Rome  of  the  Far 
East."  Historical  Japan  began  on  the  island  of  Kiu-sui, 
facing  the  Yellow  Sea.  Like  Korea,  it  derived  its  writing, 
its  fantastic  medical  notions,  its  industrial  methods,  some 
features  of  its  government  administration,  its  Buddhism  and 
its  religion  of  Confucius  from  the  people  about  the  lower 
Hoangho.41  Three  centuries  ago  Japan  had  its  colony  on 
Korean  soil  at  Fusan,  the  Calais  of  the  East.42  For  purposes 
of  piracy  and  smuggling  Japanese  penetrated  far  up  the 
rivers  of  China.  Korea  has  kept  in  touch  with  China  by  an 
active  trade  and  diplomatic  relations  through  the  centuries. 
But  to-day  China  is  going  to  school  to  Japan.  Since 
Japan  renounced  her  policy  of  seclusion  in  1868  along 
with  her  antiquated  form  of  government,  and  since  Korea 
has  been  forced  out  of  her  hermit  life,  the  potency  of 
vicinal  location  around  this  enclosed  sea  has  been  suddenly 
restored.  The  enforced  opening  of  the  treaty  ports  of 
Japan,  Korea  and  China  simply  prepared  the  way  for  this 
basin  to  reassert  its  power  to  unite,  and  to  unite  now  more 
closely  and  effectively  than  ever  before,  under  the  law  of 
increasing  territorial  areas.  The  stimulus  was  first  com- 
municated to  the  basin  from  without,  from  the  trading 
nations  of  the  Occident  and  that  new-born  Orient  rising 
from  the  sea  on  the  California  shores.  Japan  has  responded 
most  promptly  and  most  actively  to  these  over-sea  stimuli, 
just  as  England  has,  of  all  Europe,  felt  most  strongly  the 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS  307 

reflex  influences  from  trans-Atlantic  lands.  The  awakening 
of  this  basin  has  started,  therefore,  from  its  seaward  rim; 
its  star  has  risen  in  the  east.  It  is  in  the  small  countries  of 
the  world  that  such  stars  rise.  The  compressed  energies  of 
Japan,  stirred  by  over-sea  contact  and  an  improved  govern- 
ment at  home,  have  overleaped  the  old  barriers  and  are  fol- 
lowing the  lines  of  slight  resistance  which  this  land-bound  sea 
affords.  Helped  by  the  bonds  of  geographical  conditions 
and  of  race,  she  has  begun  to  convert  China  and  Korea  into 
her  culture  colonies.  The  on-looking  world  feels  that  the 
ultimate  welfare  of  China  and  Korea  can  be  best  nurtured 
by  Japan,  which  will  thus  pay  its  old  debt  to  the  Middle 
Kingdom. 

Despite  the  fact  that  China's  history  has  always  had  a  Chinese 
decidedly  inland  character,  that  its  political  expansion  has  ex?ai 
been  landward,  that  it  has  practiced  most  extensively  and 
successively  internal  colonization,  and  that  its  policy  of 
exclusion  has  tended  to  deaden  its  outlook  toward  the  Pacific, 
nevertheless  China's  direct  intercourse  with  the  west  and  its 
westward-directed  influence  have  never,  in  point  of  signifi- 
cance, been  comparable  with  that  toward  the  east  and 
south.  Here  a  succession  of  marginal  seas  offered  easy 
water-paths,  dotted  with  way  stations,  to  their  outermost  rim 
in  Japan,  the  Philippines  and  remote  Australia.  About  the 
South  China  Sea,  the  Gulf  of  Siam,  the  Sulu,  Celebes,  and 
Java  Seas,  the  coastal  regions  of  the  outlying  islands  have 
for  centuries  received  Chinese  goods  and  culture,  and  a -blend 
of  that  obstinately  assertive  Chinese  blood. 

The  strength  of  these  influences  has  decreased  with  every 
increase  of  distance  from  the  indented  coasts  and  teeming, 
seafaring  population  of  South  China,  and  with  every  decrease 
in  race  affinity.  They  have  left  only  faint  traces  on  the 
alien  shores  of  far-away  Australia.  The  divergent  ethnic 
stock  of  the  widespread  Malay  world  has  been  little  suscep- 
tible to  these  influences,  which  are  therefore  weak  in  the 
remoter  islands,  but  clearly  discernible  on  the  coasts  of  the 
Philippines,43  Borneo,  the  nearer  Sunda  Islands,  and  the 
peninsula  of  Malacca,  where  the  Chinese  have  had  trading 
colonies  for  centuries.44  But  in  the  eastern  half  of  Farther 


308 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS 


Importance 
of  zonal 
and  con- 
tinental 
location. 


Thalaseic 
character 
of  the 
Indian 
Ocean. 


India,  which  is  grouped  with  China  by  land  as  well  as  by  sea, 
and  whose  race  stock  is  largely  if  not  purely  Mongolian, 
these  influences  are  very  marked,  so  that  the  whole  con- 
tinental rim  of  the  South  China  Sea,  from  Formosa  to  the 
Isthmus  of  Malacca,  is  strongly  assimilated  in  race  and 
culture.  Tongking,  exposed  to  those  modifying  influences 
which  characterize  all  land  frontiers,  as  well  as  to  coastwise 
intercourse,  is  in  its  people  and  civilization  merely  a  tran- 
script of  China.  The  coast  districts  and  islands  of  Annam 
are  occupied  by  Chinese  as  far  as  the  hills  of  Cambodia, 
and  the  name  of  Cochin  China  points  to  the  origin  of  its 
predominant  population.  One-sixth  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Siam  are  Chinese,  some  of  whom  have  filtered  through  the 
northern  border;  Bangkok,  the  capital,  has  a  large  Chinese 
quarter.  The  whole  economic  life  and  no  small  part  of  the 
intellectual  life  of  the  eastern  face  of  Farther  India  south  to 
Singapore  is  centered  in  the  activity  of  the  Chinese.45 

The  historical  significance  of  an  enclosed  sea  basin  depends 
upon  its  zonal  location  and  its  position  in  relation  to  the 
surrounding  lands.  We  observe  a  steady  decrease  of  his- 
torical importance  from  south  to  north  through  the  connected 
series  of  the  Yellow,  Japan,  Okhotsk,  Bering  Seas  and  the 
Arctic  basin,  miscalled  ocean.  The  far-northern  location 
of  the  Baltic,  with  its  long  winters  of  ice-bound  ports  and 
its  glaciated  lands,  retarded  its  inclusion  in  the  field  of 
history,  curtailed  its  important  historical  period,  and 
reduced  the  intensity  of  its  historical  life,  despite  the  brave, 
eager  activity  of  the  Hanseatic  League.  The  Mediterranean 
had  the  advantage,  not  only  of  a  more  favorable  zonal  situa- 
tion, but  of  a  location  at  the  meeting  place  of  three  conti- 
nents and  on  the  line  of  maritime  traffic  across  the  eastern 
hemisphere  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific. 

These  advantages  it  shares  in  some  degree  with  the  Indian 
Ocean,  which,  as  Ratzel  justly  argues,  is  not  a  true  ocean, 
at  best  only  half  an  ocean.  North  of  the  equator,  where  it 
is  narrowed  and  enclosed  like  an  inland  sea,  it  loses  the 
hydrospheric  and  atmospheric  characteristics  of  a  genuine 
ocean.  Currents  and  winds  are  disorganized  by  the  close- 
hugging  lands.  Here  the  steady  northeast  trade  wind  is 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS  309 

replaced  by  the  alternating  air  currents  of  the  northeast  and 
southwest  monsoons,  which  at  a  very  early  date  4S  enabled 
merchant  vessels  to  break  away  from  their  previous  slow, 
coastwise  path,  and  to  strike  a  straight  course  on  their 
voyage  between  Arabia  or  the  east  coast  of  Africa  and 
India.4'  Moreover,  this  northern  half  of  the  Indian  Ocean 
looks  like  a  larger  Mediterranean  with  its  southern  coast 
removed.  It  has  the  same  east  and  west  series  of  peninsulas 
harboring  differentiated  nationalities,  the  same  northward 
running  recesses,  but  all  on  a  larger  scale.  It  has  linked 
together  the  history  of  Asia  and  Africa;  and  by  the  Red 
Sea  and  Persian  Gulf,  it  has  drawn  Europe  and  the  Mediter- 
ranean into  its  sphere  of  influence.  At  the  western  corner 
of  the  Indian  Ocean  a  Semitic  people,  the  Arabs  of  Oman 
and  Yemen,  here  first  developed  brilliant  maritime  activity, 
like  their  Phoenician  kinsmen  of  the  Lebanon  seaboard.  Sim- 
ilar geographic  conditions  in  their  home  lands  and  a  nearly 
similar  intercontinental  location  combined  to  make  them  the 
middlemen  of  three  continents.  Just  as  the  Phoenicians,  by 
way  of  the  Mediterranean,  reached  and  roused  slumberous 
North  Africa  into  historical  activity  and  became  the  medium 
for  the  distribution  of  Egypt's  culture,  so  these  Semites  of 
the  Arabian  shores  knocked  at  the  long-closed  doors  of  East 
Africa  facing  on  the  Indian  basin,  and  drew  this  region  into 
the  history  of  southern  Asia.  Thus  the  Africa  of  the  en- 
closed seas  was  awakened  to  some  measure  of  historical  life, 
while  the  Africa  of  the  wide  Atlantic  slept  on. 

From  the  dawn  of  history  the  northern  Indian  Ocean  was  The  sea 
a  thoroughfare.     Alexander  the  Great's  rediscovery  of  the  route  to 
old  sea  route  to  the  Orient  sounds  like  a  modern  event  in     * 
relation  to  the  gray  ages  behind  it.     Along  this  thoroughfare 
Indian   colonists,  traders,   and  priests   carried   the   elements 
of  Indian  civilization  to  the  easternmost  Sunda  Isles ;   and 
Oriental   wares,   sciences   and   religions   moved   westward   to 
the  margin  of  Europe  and  Africa.     The  Indian  Ocean  pro- 
duced a  civilization  of  its  own,  with  which  it  colored  a  vast 
semi-circle   of  land  reaching   from   Java  to   Abyssinia,   and 
more   faintly,   owing   to   the   wider   divergence   of  race,   the 
further  stretch  from  Abyssinia  to  Mozambique. 


310 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS 


Limitation 
of  small 
area  in  en- 
closed seas. 


Thus  the  northern  Indian  Ocean,  owing  to  its  form,  its 
location  in  the  angle  between  Asia  and  Africa  and  the  lati- 
tude where,  round  the  whole  earth,  "the  zone  of  greatest 
historical  density"  begins,  and  especially  its  location  just 
southeast  of  the  Mediterranean  as  the  eastern  extension  of 
that  maritime  track  of  ancient  and  modern  times  between 
Europe  and  China,  has  been  involved  in  a  long  series  of 
historical  events.  From  the  historical  standpoint,  prior  to 
1492  it  takes  a  far  higher  place  than  the  Atlantic  and 
Pacific,  owing  to  its  nature  as  an  enclosed  sea.48  But  like 
all  such  basins,  this  northern  Indian  Ocean  attained  its  zenith 
of  historical  importance  in  early  times.  In  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury it  suffered  a  partial  eclipse,  which  passed  only  with 
the  opening  of  the  Suez  Canal.  During  this  interval,  how- 
ever, the  Portuguese,  Dutch  and  English  had  rounded  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope  and  entered  this  basin  on  its  open  or 
oceanic  side.  By  their  trading  stations,  which  soon  traced 
the  outlines  of  its  coasts  from  Sofala  in  South  Africa  around 
to  Java,  they  made  this  ocean  an  alcove  of  the  Atlantic,  and 
embodied  its  events  in  the  Atlantic  period  of  history.  It  is 
this  open  or  oceanic  side  which  differentiates  the  Indian 
Ocean  physically,  and  therefore  historically,  from  a  genuine 
enclosed  sea. 

The  limitation  of  every  enclosed  or  marginal  sea  lies  in 
its  small  area  and  in  the  relatively  restricted  circle  of  its 
bordering  lands.  Only  small  peninsulas  and  islands  can 
break  its  surface,  and  short  stretches  of  coast  combine  to 
form  its  shores.  It  affords,  therefore,  only  limited  territories 
as  goals  for  expansion,  restricted  resources  and  populations 
to  furnish  the  supply  and  demand  of  trade.  What  lands 
could  the  Mediterranean  present  to  the  colonial  outlook  of 
the  Greeks  comparable  to  the  North  America  of  the  expand- 
ing English  or  the  Brazil  of  the  Portuguese?  Yet  the  Med- 
iterranean as  a  colonial  field  had  great  advantages  in  point 
of  size  over  the  Baltic,  which  is  only  one-sixth  as  large 
(2,509,500  and  431,000  square  kilometers  respectively),  and 
especially  over  the  Red  Sea  and  Persian  Gulf,  whose  effective 
areas  were  greatly  reduced  by  the  aridity  of  their  surround- 
ing lands.  But  the  precocious  development  and  early  cessa- 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS  311 

tion  of  growth  marking  all  Mediterranean  national  life  have 
given  to  this  basin  a  variegated  history ;  and  in  every  period 
and  every  geographical  region  of  it,  from  ancient  Phoenicia 
to  modern  Spain  and  Italy,  the  early  exhaustion  of  resources 
and  dwarfing  of  political  ideals  which  characterize  most  small 
areas  become  increasingly  conspicuous.  The  history  of  Swe- 
den, Denmark,  and  the  Hanse  Towns  in  the  Baltic  tells  the 
same  story,  the  story  of  a  hothouse  plant,  forced  in  germina- 
tion and  growth,  then  stifled  in  the  close  air. 

Growth  demands   space.     Therefore,  the  progress  of  his-  Successive 
tory  has  been  attended  by  an  advance  from  smaller  to  larger  ma*ltune 

marine  areas,  with  a  constant  increase  in  those  manifold  rela-  |* 

history, 
tions  between  peoples  and  lands  which  the  water  is  able  to 

establish.  Every  great  epoch  of  history  has  had  its  own 
sea,  and  every  succeeding  epoch  has  enlarged  its  maritime 
field.  The  Greek  had  the  Aegean,  the  Roman  the  whole 
Mediterranean,  to  which  the  Middle  Ages  made  an  addition 
in  the  North  Sea  and  Baltic.  The  modern  period  has  had  the 
Atlantic,  and  the  twentieth  century  is  now  entering  upon  the 
final  epoch  of  the  World  Ocean.  The  gradual  inclusion  of 
this  World  Ocean  in  the  widened  scope  of  history  has  been 
due  to  the  expansion  of  European  peoples,  who,  for  the  past 
twenty  centuries,  have  been  the  most  far-reaching  agents  in 
the  making  of  universal  history.  Owing  to  the  location  and 
structure  of  their  continent,  they  have  always  found  the 
larger  outlet  in  a  western  sea.  In  the  south  the  field  widened 
from  the  Phoenician  Sea  to  the  Aegean,  then  to  the  Mediter- 
ranean, on  to  the  Atlantic,  and  across  it  to  its  western  shores ; 
in  the  north  it  moved  from  the  quiet  Baltic  to  the  tide-swept 
North  Sea  and  across  the  North  Atlantic.  Only  the  South 
Atlantic  brought  European  ships  to  the  great  world  high- 
way of  the  South  Seas,  and  gave  them  the  choice  of  an  eastern 
or  western  route  to  the  Pacific.  Every  new  voyage  in  the 
age  of  discovery  expanded  the  historical  horizon;  and  every 
improvement  in  the  technique  of  navigation  has  helped  to 
eliminate  distance  and  reduced  intercourse  on  the  World 
Ocean  to  the  time-scale  of  the  ancient  Mediterranean. 

It  would  be  a  mistake,  however,  to  suppose  that  the  larger 
oceanic  horizon  has  meant  a  corresponding  increase  in  the  rel- 


312 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS 


Contrasted 
historical 
roles  of 
northern 
and  south- 
ern hemi- 
spheres. 


ative  content  and  importance  of  history  for  the  known  world 
of  each  period.*  Such  an  intense,  concentrated  national  life  as 
occurred  in  those  little  Mediterranean  countries  in  ancient 
times  is  not  duplicated  now,  unless  we  find  a  parallel  in  Jap- 
an's recent  career  in  the  Yellow  Sea  basin.  There  was  some- 
thing as  cosmic  in  the  colonial  ventures  of  the  Greeks  to  the 
wind-swept  shores  of  the  Crimea  or  barbarous  wilds  of  Mas- 
silia,  as  in  the  establishruent  of  English  settlements  on  the 
brimming  rivers  of  Virginia  or  the  torrid  coast  of  Malacca. 
Alexander's  conquest  of  the  Asiatic  rim  of  the  Mediterranean 
and  Rome's  political  unification  of  the  basin  had  a  signifi- 
cance for  ancient  times  comparable  with  the  Russification  of 
northern  Asia  and  the  establishment  of  the  British  Empire 
for  our  day. 

The  ocean  has  always  performed  one  function  in  the  evo- 
lution of  history ;  it  has  provided  the  outlet  for  the  exercise 
of  redundant  national  powers.  The  abundance  of  opportu- 
nity which  it  presents  to  these  disengaged  energies  depends 
upon  the  size,  location  and  other  geographic  conditions  of 
the  bordering  lands.  These  opportunities  are  limited  in  an 
enclosed  basin,  larger  in  the  oceans,  and  largest  in  the  north- 
ern halves  of  the  oceans,  owing  to  the  widening  of  all  land- 
masses  towards  the  north  and  the  consequent  contraction 
of  the  oceans  and  seas  in  the  same  latitudes. 

A  result  of  this  grouping  is  the  abundance  of  land  in  the 
northern  hemisphere,  and  the  vast  predominance  of  water 
in  the  southern,  by  reason  of  which  these  two  hemispheres 
have  each  assumed  a  distinct  role  in  history.  The  northern 
hemisphere  offers  the  largest  advantages  for  the  habitation 
of  man,  and  significantly  enough,  contains  a  population  five 
times  that  of  the  southern  hemisphere.  The  latter,  on  the 
other  hand,  with  its  vast,  unbroken  water  areas,  has  been 
the  great  oceanic  highway  for  circum-mundane  exploration 
and  trade.  This  great  water  girdle  of  the  South  Seas  had 
to  be  discovered  before  the  spherical  form  of  the  earth  could 
be  proven.  In  the  wide  territory  of  the  northern  hemisphere 
civilization  has  experienced  an  uninterrupted  development, 
first  in  the  Old  World,  because  this  offered  in  its  large  area 
north  of  the  equator  the  fundamental  conditions  for  rapid 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS  313 

evolution ;  then  it  was  transplanted  with  greatest  success  to 
North  America.  The  northern  hemisphere  contains,  there- 
fore, "the  zone  of  greatest  historical  density,"  from  which 
the  track  of  the  South  Seas  is  inconveniently  remote.  Hence 
we  find  in  recent  decades  a  reversion  to  the  old  east-west  path 
along  the  southern  rim  of  Eurasia,  now  perfected  by  the 
Suez  Canal,  and  to  be  extended  in  the  near  future  around 
the  world  by  the  union  of  the  Pacific  with  the  Caribbean 
Sea  at  Panama ;  so  that  finally  the  northern  hemisphere  will 
have  its  own  circum-mundane  waterway,  along  the  line  of 
greatest  intercontinental  intercourse. 

The  size  of  the  ocean  as  a  whole  is  so  enormous,  and  yet  Size  of 
its  various  subdivisions  are  so  uniform  in  their  physical  the  oceans 
aspect,  that  their  differences  of  size  produce  less  conspicu- 
ous historical  effects  than  their  diversity  of  area  would  lead 
one  to  expect.  A  voyage  across  the  177,000  square  miles 
(453,500  square  kilometers)  of  the  Black  Sea  does  not  differ 
materially  from  one  across  the  979,000  square  miles  (2,- 
509,500  square  kilometers)  of  the  Mediterranean;  or  a  voy- 
age across  the  213,000  square  miles  (547,600  square  kilo- 
meters) of  the  North  Sea,  from  one  across  the  three-hundred- 
fold larger  area  of  the  Pacific.  The  ocean  does  not,  like 
the  land,  wear  upon  its  surface  the  evidences  and  effects  of 
its  size;  it  wraps  itself  in  the  same  garment  of  blue  waves 
or  sullen  swell,  wherever  it  appears ;  but  the  outward  cloak 
of  the  land  varies  from  zone  to  zone.  The  significant 
anthropo-geographical  influence  of  the  size  of  the  oceans, 
as  opposed  to  that  of  the  smaller  seas,  comes  from  the  larger 
circle  of  lands  which  the  former  open  to  maritime  enterprise. 
For  primitive  navigation,  when  the  sailor  crept  from  head- 
land to  headland  and  from  island  to  island,  the  small  en- 
closed basin  with  its  close-hugging  shores  did  indeed  offer 
the  best  conditions.  To-day,  only  the  great  tonnage  of 
ocean-going  vessels  may  reflect  in  some  degree  the  vast  areas 
they  traverse  between  continent  and  continent.  Coasting 
craft  and  ships  designed  for  local  traffic  in  enclosed  seas  are 
in  general  smaller,  as  in  the  Baltic,  though  the  enormous 
commerce  of  the  Great  Lakes,  which  constitute  in  effect  an 
inland  sea,  demands  immense  vessels. 


314  OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS 

Neutrality  The  vast  size  of  the  oceans  has  been   the  basis  of  their 

of  the  seas,  m-utrality.  The  neutrality  of  the  seas  is  a  recent  idea  in 
its  evolu-  political  history.  The  principle  arose  in  connection  with 
the  oceans,  and  from  them  was  extended  to  the  smaller  basins, 
which  previously  tended  to  be  regarded  as  private  political 
domains.  Their  limited  area,  which  enabled  them  to  be  com- 
passed, enabled  them  also  to  be  appropriated,  controlled 
and  policed.  The  Greek  excluded  the  Phanician  from  the 
Aegean  and  made  it  an  Hellenic  sea.  Carthage  and  Tar- 
entum  tried  to  draw  the  dead  line  for  Roman  merchantmen 
at  the  Lacinian  Cape,  the  doorway  into  the  Ionian  Sea,  and 
thereby  involved  themselves  in  the  famous  Punic  Wars.  The 
whole  Mediterranean  became  a  Roman  sea,  the  mare  nostrum. 
Pompey's  fleet  was  able  to  police  it  effectively  and  to  exter- 
minate the  pirates  in  a  few  months,  as  Cicero  tells  us  in  his 
oration  for  the  Manilian  Law.  Venice,  by  the  conquest  of 
the  Dalmatian  pirates  in  991  prepared  to  make  herself 
dominatrix  Adriatici  maris,  as  she  was  later  called.  By  the 
thirteenth  century  she  had  secured  full  command  of  the  sea, 
spoke  of  it  as  "the  Gulf,"  in  her  desire  to  stamp  it  as  a 
mare  clausum,  maintained  in  it  a  powerful  patrol  fleet  under 
a  Capitan  in  Golfo,  whose  duty  it  was  to  police  the  sea  for 
pirates  and  to  seize  all  ships  laden  with  contraband  goods. 
She  claimed  and  enforced  the  right  of  search  of  foreign 
vessels,  and  compelled  them  to  discharge  two-thirds  of  their 
cargo  at  Venice,  which  thus  became  the  clearing  house  of  the 
whole  Adriatic.  She  even  appealed  to  the  Pope  for  confirma- 
tion of  her  dominion  over  the  sea.48  Sweden  and  Denmark 
strove  for  a  dominum  maris  Baltici;  but  the  Hanse  Towns 
of  northern  Germany  secured  the  maritime  supremacy  in 
the  basin,  kept  a  toll-gate  at  its  entrance,  and  levied  toll 
or  excluded  merchant  ships  at  their  pleasure,  a  right  which 
after  the  fall  of  the  Hanseatic  power  was  assumed  by 
Denmark  and  maintained  till  1857.  "The  Narrow  Seas" 
over  which  England  claimed  sovereignty  from  1299  to  1805, 
and  on  which  she  exacted  a  salute  from  every  foreign  vessel, 
included  the  North  Sea  as  far  as  Stadland  Cape  in  Norway, 
the  English  Channel,  and  the  Bay  of  Biscay  down  to  Cape 
Finisterre  in  northern  Spain.50 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS  315 

At  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  Indian  Ocean 
was  a  Portuguese  sea.  Spain  was  trying  to  monopolize  the 
Caribbean  and  even  the  Pacific  Ocean.  But  the  immense 
areas  of  these  pelagic  fields  of  enterprise,  and  the  rapid 
intrusion  into  them  of  other  colonial  powers  soon  rendered 
obsolete  in  practice  the  principle  of  the  mare  clausum,  and 
introduced  that  of  the  mare  liberum.  The  political  theory  of 
the  freedom  of  the  seas  seems  to  have  needed  vigorous  sup- 
port even  toward  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century.  At  this 
time  we  find  writers  like  Salmasius  and  Hugo  Grotius  invoking 
it  to  combat  Portuguese  monopoly  of  the  Indian  Ocean  as  a 
mare  clausum,.  Grotius  in  a  lengthy  dissertation  upholds  the 
thesis  that  "Jure  gentium  quibusvis  ad  quosvis  liberam  esse 
navigationem,"  and  supports  it  by  an  elaborate  argument 
and  quotations  from  the  ancient  poets,  philosophers,  orators 
and  historians.51  This  principle  was  not  finally  acknowl- 
edged by  England  as  applicable  to  "The  Narrow  Seas"  till 
1805.  Now,  by  international  agreement,  political  domain 
extends  only  to  one  marine  league  from  shore  or  within 
cannon  range.  The  rest  of  the  vast  water  area  remains  the 
unobstructed  highway  of  the  world. 

NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  IX 

1.  S.  M.  Zwemer,  Arabia  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  p.  135.    New  York,  1900. 

2.  A.  H.  Layard,  Nineveh  and  Its  Eemains,  Vol.  I,  p.  277;  Vol.  II, 
79-81.     New  York,  1849. 

3.  E.  F.  Knight,  Where  Three  Empires  Meet,  pp.  257,  261.     London, 
1897. 

4.  Col.  Lane  Fox,  Early  Modes  of  Navigation,  Journal  of  Anthropolog- 
ical Institute,  Vol.  IV,  p.  423. 

5.  Boyd  Alexander,  From  the  Niger  to  the  Nile,  Vol.  I,  p.  167.    Lon- 
don, 1907. 

6.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  324. 

7.  James  H.  Breasted,  History  of  Egypt,  pp.  89,  91,  97.     New  York, 
1905.    Col.  Lane  Fox,  Early  Modes  of  Navigation,  Journal  of  Anthropo- 
logical Institute,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  414-417. 

8.  G.  Schweinfurth,  The  Heart  of  Africa,  Vol.  I,  p.  77.     London,  1873. 

9.  E.  Huntington,  The  Depression  of  Sistan  in  Eastern  Persia,  Bulle- 
tin of  the  American  Geographical  Society,  Vol.  37,  No.  5.  1905. 

10.  Schoolcraft,   The  Indian  Tribes  of  the  United   States,  Vol.  I,  p. 
214.     Philadelphia,   1853. 

11.  H.  H.  Bancroft,  The  Native  Races,  Vol.  I,  pp.  382-383,  408,  564. 


316  OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS 

San  Francisco,  1886.     D.  G.  Brinton,  The  American  Race,  pp.  110,  112. 
Philadelphia,  1901. 

12.  Herodotus,  Book  1,  Chap.  194. 

13.  S.  M.  Zwemer,  Arabia  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  p.  135.     New  York, 
1900. 

14.  Cotterill  and  Little,   Ships  and   Sailors,  pp.  ix-x,  38.       London, 
1868. 

15.  M.  Hue,  Travels  in  Tartary,  Thibet  and  China  in  1846,  Vol.  II,  p. 
251.     Chicago,  1898. 

16.  Elliott  Coues,  History  of  the  Lewis  and  Clark  Expedition,  Vol.  I, 
p.  159.    New  York,  1893. 

17.  Col.  Lane  Fox,  Early  Modes  of  Navigation,  Journal  of  Anthro- 
pological Institute,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  423-425. 

18.  H.  M.  Stanley,  Through  the  Dark  Continent,  VoL  I,  pp.  313-314. 
New  York,  1879. 

19.  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  184,  219-220,  270-272,  300. 

20.  Katzel,  History  of  Mankind,  VoL  II,  p.  288.     London,  1896-1893. 

21.  Ibid.,  Vol  I,  pp.  358-359.     Spencer  and  Gillen,  Northern  Tribes  of 
Central  Australia,  pp.  679-680.     London,  1904. 

22.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  pp.  153-154;  Vol.  II,  pp.  91, 
100.     London,  1896  1898. 

23.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  166-170. 

24.  Captain  Winkler,  Sea  Charts  Formerly  Used  in  the  Marshall  Is- 
lands, Smithsonian  Report  for  1899,  translated  from  the  Marine  Rund- 
schau.    Berlin,   1898. 

25.  Captain  James  Cook,  Journal  of  First  Voyage  Round  the  World, 
pp.  70,  105,  119,  221,  230.    Edited  by  W.  J.  L.  Wharton.    London,  1893. 

26.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  pp.  161,  174.     London,  1896- 
1898. 

27.  The    Commercial    and    Fiscal    Policy    of    the   Venetian    Republic, 
Edinburgh  Beview,  Vol.  200,  pp.  352-353.     1904. 

28.  H.  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  I,  pp.  188-189,  193-195. 
New  York,  1902-1906. 

29.  G.  Sergi,  The  Mediterranean  Race,  pp.  29-37.    New  York,  1901.  W. 
Z.   Ripley,  Races  of   Europe,  pp.   128-130,   270-273,   387-390,  407,   444, 
448.     New  York,  1899. 

30.  H.  J.  Mackinder,  Britain  and  the  British  Seas,  pp.  189-190.     Lon- 
don, 1904. 

31.  Sydow-Wagner   Schul-Atlas,   Folkei    und  Sprachenkarten,  No.   13. 
Gotha,  1905.     A.  Leroy-Beaulieu,  The  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  map  p.  80. 
New  York,  1897. 

32.  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  5-17.     New  York, 
1902-1906. 

33.  E.  C.  Semple,  The  Development  of  the  Hanse  Towns  in  Relation  to 
their  Geographical  Environment,  Bulletin  American  Geographical  Society, 
Vol.  XXXI,  No.  3,  1899. 

34.  Helen  Zimmern,  The  Hansa  Towns,  pp.  24-25,  54-55.     New  York, 
1895. 

35.  Nordenskiold,  The  Voyage  of  the  Vega,  pp.  365,  588,  591.     New 
York,  1882. 

36.  Ibid.,  pp.  375,  403,  405,  487,  563. 


OCEANS  AND  ENCLOSED  SEAS  317 

37.  Agnes  Laut,  The  Vikings  of  the  Pacific,  pp.  62-105.     New  York, 
1905. 

38.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  446,  449-450.     London, 
1896-1898. 

39.  Ibid.,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  180-195. 

40.  Duarte  Barbosa,  The  Coasts  of  East  Africa  and  Malabar,  pp.  17- 
18.  Hakluyt  Society  Publications.     London,  1866. 

41.  Eatzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  443-444.    London,  1896- 
1898. 

42.  Angus  Hamilton,  Korea,  pp.  130-135.     New  York,  1904. 

43.  Census  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  Vol.  I,  pp.  318-320,  478,  481-495. 
Washington,  1903. 

44.  Hans  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  II,  pp.  544-545.     New 
York,  1902-1906. 

45.  Ratzel,    History    of    Mankind,    Vol.    Ill,    pp.    407-412.      London, 
1896-1898. 

46.  Pliny,  Natural  History,  Book  VI,  chap.  26. 

47.  Bunbury,  History  of  Ancient  Geography,  Vol.  II,  pp.  351,  417-418, 
470,  471.     London,  1883. 

48.  For  full  discussion  of  Indian  Ocean,  see  Helmolt,  History  of  the 
World,  Vol.  II,  pp.  580-584,  602-610.     New  York,   1902-1906.     Duarte 
Barbosa,  The  Coasts  of  East  Africa  and  Malabar,  pp.  26-28,  41-42,  59-60, 
67,  75,   79-80,   83,   166,   170,   174,   179,   184,   191-194,   Hakluyt   Society. 
London,  1866. 

49.  Pompeo  Molmenti,  Venice  in  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  I,  pp.  117,  121- 
123,   130.      Chicago,   1906.      The   Commercial   and   Fiscal   Policy   of   the 
Venetian  Republic,  Edinburgh  Review,  Vol.  200,  pp.  341-344,  347.     1904. 

50.  H.  J.  Mackinder,  Britain  and  the  British  Seas,  p.  24,  note.  London, 
1904. 

51.  Hugonis  Grotii,  Mare  Liberum  sive  de  jure  quod  Batavis  competit 
ad  Indicana  commercia  dissertatio,  contained  in  his  De  Jure  Belli  et 
Pads.     Hagae  Comitis,  1680. 


CHAPTER  X 


Protection 
of  a  water 
frontier. 


MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER 

DESPITE  the  extensive  use  which  man  makes  of  the  water 
highways  of  the  world,  they  remain  to  him  highways,  places 
for  his  passing  and  repassing,  not  for  his  abiding.  Essen- 
tially a  terrestrial  animal,  he  makes  his  sojourn  upon  the 
deep  only  temporary,  even  when  as  a  fisherman  he  is  kept 
upon  the  sea  for  months  during  the  long  season  of  the  catch, 
or  when,  as  whaler,  year-long  voyages  are  necessitated  by  the 
remoteness  and  expanse  of  his  field  of  operations.  Yet  even 
this  rule  has  its  exceptions.  The  Moro  Bajan  are  sea  gypsies 
of  the  southern  Philippines  and  the  Sulu  archipelago,  of 
whom  Gannett  says  "their  home  is  in  their  boats  from  the 
cradle  to  the  grave,  and  they  know  no  art  but  that  of 
fishing."  Subsisting  almost  exclusively  on  sea  food,  they 
wander  about  from  shore  to  shore,  one  family  to  a  boat,  in 
little  fleets  of  half  a  dozen  sail;  every  floating  community 
has  its  own  headman  called  the  Captain  Bajan,  who  emboflk- 
all  their  slender  political  organization.  When  occasionally 
they  abandon  their  rude  boats  for  a  time,  they  do  not  aban- 
don the  sea,  but  raise  their  huts  on  piles  above  the  water 
on  some  shelving  beach.  Like  the  ancient  lake-dwellers  of 
Switzerland  and  Italy,  only  in  death  do  they  acknowledge 
their  ultimate  connection  with  the  solid  land.  They  never 
bury  their  dead  at  sea,  but  always  on  a  particular  island,  to 
which  the  funeral  cortege  of  rude  outrigged  boats  moves  to 
the  music  of  the  paddle's  dip.1 

The  margin  of  river,  lake  and  sea  has  always  attracted 
the  first  settlements  of  man  because  it  offered  a  ready  food 
supply  in  its  animal  life  and  an  easy  highway  for  com- 
munication. Moreover,  a  water  front  made  a  comparatively 
safe  frontier  for  the  small,  isolated  communities  which  con- 
stituted primitive  societies.  The  motive  of  protection,  dom- 
inant in  the  savage  when  selecting  sites  for  his  villages,  led 


MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER         319 

him  to  place  them  on  the  pear-shaped  peninsula  formed  by 
a  river  loop,  or  on  an  island  in  the  stream  or  off  the  coast; 
or  to  sever  his  connection  with  the  solid  land,  whence  attack 
might  come,  and  provide  himself  with  a  boundary  waste  of 
water  by  raising  his  hut  on  piles  above  the  surface  of  lake, 
river  or  sheltered  seacoast,  within  easy  reach  of  the  shore. 
In  this  location  the  occupant  of  the  pile  dwelling  has 
found  all  his  needs  answered — fishing  grounds  beneath  and 
about  his  hut,  fields  a  few  hundred  feet  away  on  shore,  easily 
reached  by  his  dug-out  canoe,  and  a  place  of  retreat  from  a 
land  enemy,  whether  man  or  wild  beast. 

Such  pile  dwellings,  answering  the  primary  need  of  pro-  Ancient 
tection,  have  had  wide  distribution,  especially  in  the  Tropics, 
and  persist  into  our  own  times  among  retarded  peoples 
living  in  small,  isolated  groups  too  weak  for  effective  defence. 
They  were  numerous  in  the  lakes  of  Switzerland2  and  north- 
ern Italy  down  to  the  first  century  of  our  era,  and  existed 
later  in  slightly  modified  form  in  Ireland,  Scotland,  England 
and  southern  Wales.3  In  ancient  Ireland  they  were  con- 
structed on  artificial  islands,  raised  in  shallow  spots  of  lakes 
or  morasses  by  means  of  fascines  weighted  down  with  gravel 
and  clay,  and  moored  to  the  bottom  by  stakes  driven  through 
the  mass.  Such  groups  of  dwellings  were  called  Crannogs; 
they  existed  in  Ireland  from  the  earliest  historical  period 
and  continued  in  use  down  to  the  time  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 
In  the  turbulent  twelfth  century,  the  warring  lords  of 
the  soil  adopted  them  as  places  of  refuge  and  residence.4 
Herodotus  describes  a  pile  village  of  the  ancient  Thracians  in 
Lake  Prasias  near  the  Hellespont,  built  quite  after  the  Swiss 
type,  with  trap  doors  in  the  floor  for  fishing  or  throwing  out 
refuse.  Its  inhabitants  escaped  conquest  by  the  Persians 
under  King  Darius,  and  avoided  the  fate  of  their  fellow 
tribesmen  on  land,  who  were  subdued  and  removed  as 
colonists  to  Asia.5 

Among  Europeans  such  pile  villages  belong  to  primitive  Present 
stages  of  development,  chiefly  to  the  Stone,  Bronze,  and  early  distribution. 
Iron   Ages.      They   are   widely   distributed  in  modern   times 
among  retarded  peoples,  who  in  this  way  seek  compensation 
for  their  social  and  economic  weakness.     In  South  America, 


320         .MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER 


Malayan 

pile 

dwellings. 


the  small  timid  tribe  of  the  native  Warraus  till  quite  recently 
built  their  dwellings  on  platforms  over  the  water  in  the  river 
network  of  the  Orinoco  delta  and  along  the  swamp  coast  as 
far  as  the  Essequibo.  These  pile  villages,  "fondata  sopra 
Vacqua  come  Venezia,"  as  Vespuccius  says,  suggested  to  him 
the  name  of  Venezuela  or  little  Venice  for  this  coast.6  A 
pile  village  in  Jull  Lake,  a  lacustrine  expansion  in  a  tribu- 
tary of  the  upper  Salwin  River,  is  inhabited  by  the  Inthas, 
apparently  an  alien  colony  in  Burma.  They  have  added 
a  detail  in  their  floating  gardens,  rafts  covered  with  soil,  on 
which  they  raise  tomatoes,  watermelons  and  gourds.7 

In  little  Lake  Mohrya,  located  near  the  upper  Lualaba 
River,  a  southern  headstream  of  the  Congo,  Cameron  found 
numerous  pile  dwellings,  whose  owners  moved  about  in  dug- 
out canoes  and  cultivated  fields  on  land,8  as  did  their 
Swiss  confreres  of  twenty  centuries  ago.  Livingstone,  in 
descending  from  Lake  Nyassa  by  the  Shire  River,  found  in 
the  lakelet  of  Pamalombe,  into  which  the  stream  widened, 
similar  water  huts  inhabited  by  a  number  of  Manganja 
families,  who  had  been  driven  from  their  homes  by  slave 
raiders.  The  slender  reeds  of  the  papyrus  thicket,  lining 
the  shore  in  a  broad  band,  served  as  piles,  number  compen- 
sating for  the  lack  of  strength;  the  reeds,  bent  downward 
and  fastened  together  into  a  mat,  did  indeed  support  their 
light  dwellings,  but  heaved  like  thin  ice  when  the  savages 
moved  from  hut  to  hut.  The  dense  forest  of  papyrus  left 
standing  between  village  and  shore  effectually  screened  their 
retreat,  and  the  abundant  fish  in  the  lake  provided  them  with 
food.9 

In  the  vast  island  world  of  Indonesia,  where  constant  con- 
tact with  the  sea  has  bred  the  amphibian  Malay  race,  we 
are  not  surprised  to  find  that  the  typical  Malay  house  is 
built  on  piles  above  the  water;  and  that  when  the  coast 
Malay  is  driven  inland  by  new-comers  of  his  own  stock  and 
forced  to  abandon  his  favorite  occupations  of  trade,  piracy 
and  fishing,  he  takes  to  agriculture  but  still  retains  his  sea- 
born architecture  and  raises  his  hut  on  poles  above  the 
ground,  beyond  the  reach  of  an  enemy's  spear-thrust.  The 
Moro  Samal  Laut  of  the  southern  Sulu  Archipelago  avoid 


MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER         321 

the  large  volcanic  islands  of  the  group,  and  place  their  big 
villages  over  the  sea  on  low  coral  reefs.  The  sandy  beaches 
of  the  shore  hold  their  coco-palms,  whose  nuts  by  their 
milk  eke  out  the  scanty  supply  of  drinking  water,  and  whose 
fronds  shade  the  tombs  of  the  dead.10  The  sea-faring  Malays 
of  the  Sunda  Islands,  in  thickly  populated  points  of  the 
coast,  often  dwell  in  permanently  inhabited  rafts  moored 
near  the  pile  dwellings.  Palembang  on  the  lower  swampy 
course  of  the  River  Musi  has  a  floating  suburb  of  this  sort. 
It  is  called  the  "Venice  of  Sumatra,"  just  as  Banjarmasin, 
a  vast  complex  of  pile  and  raft  dwellings,  is  called  the 
"Venice  of  Borneo,"  and  Brunei  to  the  north  is  the  "Venice 
of  the  East."11  Both  these  towns  are  the  chief  commercial 
centers  of  their  respective  islands.  The  little  town  of  Kil- 
waru,  situated  on  a  sandbank  off  the  eastern  end  of  Ceram, 
seems  to  float  on  the  sea,  so  completely  has  it  surrounded 
and  enveloped  with  pile-built  houses  the  few  acres  of  dry 
land  which  form  its  nucleus.  It  is  a  place  of  busy  traffic, 
the  emporium  for  commerce  between  the  Malay  Archipelago 
and  New  Guinea.12 

Farther  east  in  Melanesia,  whose  coast  regions  are  more  In  Mel- 
or  less  permeated  by  Malayan  stock  and  influences,  pile  anesia. 
dwellings,  both  over  water  and  on  land  form  a  characteristic 
feature  of  the  scenery.  The  village  of  Sowek  in  Geelvink 
Bay,  on  the  northern  coast  of  Dutch  New  Guinea,  consists  of 
thirty  houses  raised  on  piles  above  the  water,  connected  with 
each  other  by  tree  trunks  but  having  only  boat  connection 
with  the  shore.  Similar  villages  are  found  hovering  over 
•he  lapping  waves  of  Humboldt  Bay,  all  of  them  recalling 
with  surprising  fidelity  the  prehistoric  lake-dwellings  of 
Switzerland.13  The  Papuan  part  of  Port  Moresby,  on  the 
southern  coast  of  British  New  Guinea,  covers  the  whole 
water-front  of  the  town  with  pile  dwellings.  In  the  vicinity 
are  similar  native  pile  villages,  such  as  Tanobada,  Hanua- 
bada,  Elevara  and  Hula,  the  latter  consisting  of  pile  dwell- 
ings scattered  about  over  the  water  in  a  circuit  of  several 
miles  and  containing  about  a  thousand  inhabitants.  Here,  too, 
the  motive  is  protection  against  the  attacks  of  inland  moun- 
tain tribes,  with  whom  the  coast  people  are  in  constant  war.14 


MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER 


River 

dwellers 
in  popu- 
lous lands. 


The  Malay  fisherman,  trader  and  pirate,  with  the  love  of 
the  sea  in  his  blood,  by  these  pile  dwellings  combines  security 
from  his  foe  and  proximity  to  his  familiar  field  of  activity. 
The  same  objects  are  achieved  by  white  traders  on  the  west 
coast  of  Africa  by  setting  up  their  dwellings  and  warehouses 
on  the  old  hulks  of  dismasted  vessels,  which  are  anchored  for 
this  purpose  in  the  river  mouths.  They  afford  some  protec- 
tion against  both  fever  and  hostile  native,  and  at  the  same 
time  occupy  the  natural  focus  of  local  trade  seeking  foreign 
exchanges. 

When  advancing  civilization  has  eliminated  the  need  for 
this  form  of  protection,  water-dwellers  may  survive  or  re- 
appear in  old  and  relatively  over-populated  countries,  as 
we  find  them  universally  on  the  rivers  of  China  and  less  often 
in  Farther  India.  Here  they  present  the  phenomenon  of 
human  life  overflowing  from  the  land  to  the  streams  of 
the  country ;  because  these,  as  highways  of  commerce,  afford 
a  means  of  livelihood,  even  apart  from  the  food  supply  in 
their  fish,  and  offer  an  unclaimed  bit  of  the  earth's  surface 
for  a  floating  home.  Canton  has  250,000  inhabitants  living 
on  boats  and  rafts  moored  in  the  river,  and  finding  occupa- 
tion in  the  vast  inland  navigation  of  the  Empire,  or  in  the 
trade  which  it  brings  to  this  port  of  the  Si-kiang.  Some 
of  the  boats  accommodate  large  families,  together  with 
modest  poultry  farms,  crowded  together  under  their  low 
bamboo  sheds.  Others  are  handsome  wooden  residences 
ornamented  with  plants,  and  yet  others  are  pleasure  resorts 
with  their  professional  singing  girls.15  In  the  lakes  and 
swamp-bordered  rivers  of  southern  Shantung,  a  considerable 
fishing  population  is  found  living  in  boats,  while  the  land 
shows  few  inhabitants.  This  population  enjoys  freedom 
from  taxation  and  unrestricted  use  of  the  rivers  and  fisheries. 
To  vary  their  scant  and  monotonous  diet,  they  construct 
floating  gardens  on  rafts  of  bamboo  covered  with  earth,  on 
which  they  plant  onions  and  garlic  and  which  they  tow- 
behind  their  boats.  They  also  raise  hundreds  of  ducks,  which 
are  trained  to  go  into  the  water  to  feed  and  return  at  a 
signal,18  thus  expanding  the  resources  of  their  river  life.. 
Bangkok  has  all  its  business  district  afloat  on  the  Menam 


MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER         323 

River — shops,  lumber  yards,  eating-houses  and  merchants' 
dwellings.  Even  the  street  vendor's  cart  is  a  small  boat, 
paddled  in  and  out  among  the  larger  junks.17 

A  far  more  modern  type  of  river-dwellers  is  found  in  the 
"shanty-boat"  people  of  the  western  rivers  of  the  United 
Slates.  They  are  the  gypsies  of  our  streams,  nomads  who 
float  downstream  with  the  current,  tying  up  at  intervals 
along  the  bank  of  some  wooded  island  or  city  waterfront, 
then  paying  a  tug  to  draw  their  house-boat  upstream.  The 
river  furnishes  them  with  fish  for  their  table  and  driftwood 
for  their  cooking-stove,  and  above  all  is  the  highway  for 
the  gratification  of  their  nomad  instincts.  There  is  no  ques- 
tion here  of  trade  and  overpopulation. 

Pile  dwellings  and  house-boats  are  a  paltry  form  of  Reclama- 
encroachment  upon  the  water  in  comparison  with  that  ex-  ^on  °* 
tensive  reclamation  of  river  swamps  and  coastal  marshes 
which  in  certain  parts  of  the  world  has  so  increased  the  area 
available  for  human  habitation.  The  water  which  is  a 
necessity  to  man  may  become  his  enemy  unless  it  is  controlled. 
The  alluvium  which  a  river  deposits  in  its  flood-plain,  whether 
in  some  flat  stretch  of  its  middle  course  or  near  the  retarding 
level  of  the  sea,  attracts  settlement  because  of  its  fertility 
and  proximity  to  a  natural  highway;  but  it  must  be  pro- 
tected by  dikes  against  the  very  element  which  created  it. 
Such  deposits  are  most  extensive  on  low  coasts  at  or  near  the 
river's  mouth,  just  where  the  junction  of  an  inland  and 
oceanic  waterway  offers  the  best  conditions  for  commerce. 
Here  then  is  a  location  destined  to  attract  and  support  a 
large  population,  for  which  place  can  be  made  only  by  steady 
encroachment  upon  the  water  of  both  river  and  sea.  Diking 
is  necessitated  not  only  by  the  demand  for  more  land  for  the 
growing  population,  but  also  by  the  constant  silting  up  of 
the  drainage  outfalls,  which  increases  the  danger  of  inunda- 
tion while  at  the  same  time  contributing  to  the  upbuilding  of 
the  land.  Conditions  here  institute  an  incessant  struggle 
between  man  and  nature;18  but  the  rewards  of  victory  are 
too  great  to  count  the  cost.  The  construction  of  sea-walls, 
embankment  of  rivers,  reclamation  of  marshes,  the  cutting 
of  canals  for  drains  and  passways  in  a  water-soaked  land, 


324         MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER 

the  conversion  of  lakes  into  meadow,  the  rectification  of  tor- 
tuous streams  for  the  greater  economy  of  this  silt-made  soil, 
all  together  constitute  the  greatest  geographical  transforma- 
tion that  man  has  brought  about  on  the  earth's  surface.18 
The  strug-  Though  the  North  Sea  lowland  of  Europe  has  suffered  from 
gle  with  ine  serious  encroachment  of  the  sea  from  the  thirteenth  to  the 
er'  sixteenth  century,  when  the  Zuyder  Zee,  the  Dollart  and 
Jade  Bay  were  formed,  nevertheless  the  counter  encroach- 
ment of  the  land  upon  the  water,  accomplished  through  the 
energy  and  intelligence  of  the  inhabitants,  has  more  than 
made  good  the  loss.  Between  the  Elbe  and  Scheldt  more  than 
2,000  square  miles  (5,000  square  kilometers)  have  been 
reclaimed  from  river  and  sea  in  the  past  three  hundred  years. 
Holland's  success  in  draining  her  large  inland  waters,  like 
the  Haarlem  Meer  (70  square  miles  or  180  square  kilometers) 
and  the  Lake  of  Ij,  has  inspired  an  attempt  to  recover  800 
square  miles  (2,050  square  kilometers)  of  fertile  soil  from  the 
borders  of  the  Zuyder  Zee  and  reduce  that  basin  to  nearly 
one-third  of  its  present  size.20  One-fourth  of  the  Nether- 
lands lies  below  the  average  of  high  tides,  and  in  1844  neces- 
sitated 9,000  windmills  to  pump  the  waste  water  into  the 
drainage  canals.21 

The  Netherlands,  with  all  its  external  features  of  man's 
war  against  the  water,  has  its  smaller  counterpart  in  the 
1,200  square  miles  of  reclaimed  soil  about  the  head  of  the 
Wash,  which  constitute  the  Fenland  of  England.  Here  too 
are  successive  lines  of  sea-wall,  the  earliest  of  them  attribu- 
ted to  the  Romans,  straightened  and  embanked  rivers,  drain- 
age canals,  windmills  and  steam  pumps,  dikes  serving  as 
roads,  lines  of  willows  and  low  moist  pastures  dotted  with 
grazing  cattle.  No  feature  of  the  Netherlands  is  omitted. 
The  low  southern  part  of  Lincolnshire  is  even  called  Holland, 
and  Dutch  prisoners  from  a  naval  battle  of  1652  wtre 
employed  there  on  the  work  of  reclamation,  which  was  begun 
on  a  large  scale  about  this  time.22  In  the  medieval  period, 
the  increase  of  population  necessitated  measures  to  improve 
the  drainage  and  extend  the  acreage;  but  there  was  little 
co-operation  among  the  land  owners,  and  the  maintenance  of 
river  dikes  and  sea-walls  was  neglected,  till  a  succession  of 


MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER         325 

disasters  from  flooding  streams  and  invading  tides  in  the 
thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  led  to  severe  measures 
against  defaulters.  One  culprit  was  placed  alive  in  a  breach 
which  his  own  neglect  or  criminal  cutting  had  caused,  and  was 
built  in,  by  way  of  educating  the  Fenlanders  to  a  sense  of 
common  responsibility.23 

The  fight  against  the  water  on  the  coast  begins  later  than 
that  against  rivers  and  swamps  in  the  interior  of  the  land; 
it  demands  greater  enterprise  and  courage,  because  it  com- 
bats two  enemies  instead  of  one;  but  its  rewards  are  corre- 
spondingly greater.  The  Netherlands  by  their  struggle 
have  acquired  not  only  territory  for  an  additional  half 
million  population,  but  have  secured  to  themselves  a  strategic 
position  in  the  maritime  trade  of  the  world. 

The  abundant  fertility  of  river  flood-plains  inev-  Mound 
itably  attracts  population  and  necessitates  some  kind  of  Vpa8es  ^ 
artificial  protection  against  inundation.  The  most  primitive 
form  of  this  protection  is  obvious  and  widespread,  restricted 
in  neither  locality  nor  race.  When  the  flood  season  con- 
verts the  flat  plain  of  the  White  Nile  below  Gondo- 
kora  (7°  N.  Lat.)  into  an  extensive  marsh,  countless  hills  of 
the  white  ant  emerge  over  the  waters.  During  the  dry 
season,  the  ants  build  up  their  hills  to  about  ten  feet,  and 
then  live  in  safety  in  the  upper  section  during  the  flood. 
They  greatly  surpass  in  intelligence  and  constructive  ability 
the  human  occupants  of  the  valley,  the  low  and  wretched 
Kytch  tribe  of  the  Dinka  Negroes,  who  like  the  ants  are 
attracted  by  the  natural  vegetation  of  the  flood-plain,  and 
who  use  the  ant-hills  as  refuge  stations  for  themselves  and 
their  cattle  during  the  flood.24  Elsewhere  in  Africa  the 
natives  are  more  intelligent,  for  flood-plain  villages  built  on 
artificial  mounds  have  existed  from  the  earliest  times. 
Diodorus  Siculus  tells  us  that  those  of  ancient  Egypt,  when 
the  Nile  was  high,  looked  like  the  Cyclades  Islands.25  Similar 
ones  are  constructed  by  the  Barotse  tribe  on  the  upper 
Zambesi.26  The  Niger  River,  rising  in  the  Foota  Jallon 
and  Kong  Mountains  which  form  a  region  of  heavy  rainfall 
from  February  to  July,  inundates  a  plain  of  several  thou- 
sand square  miles  for  a  distance  of  250  miles  above  Tim- 


326         MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER 

buctoo.  Here  again  the  villages  of  the  agricultural  Song- 
hoi  duplicate  those  of  Egypt,  built  on  the  same  clay  mounds, 
wreathed  in  the  same  feathery  palms,  and  communicating 
with  one  another  only  by  small  boats.27  The  same  picture 
is  presented  by  the  Yangtze  Kiang  plain  during  the  summer 
overflow — low  artificial  hills  rising  from  the  expanse  of 
muddy  water  and  topped  with  trees  and  villages,  while 
sampans  moored  to  their  base  show  the  means  of  communi- 
cation.28 In  the  broad  flood-plain  of  the  lower  Mississippi 
River,  the  chronicles  of  the  De  Soto  expedition  state  that  the 
Indian  villages  visited  stood  "on  mounds  made  by  art."  The 
Yazoo  River  Indians,  at  the  commencement  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  had  their  cabins  dispersed  over  the  low  deltaic  land 
on  earthen  mounds  made  by  their  own  hands.  There  is  also 
strong  evidence  that  some  of  the  works  of  the  Mound-builders 
in  the  "bottoms"  of  the  middle  and  lower  Mississippi  served 
as  protected  sites  for  the  dwellings  of  their  chiefs.29 
Diking  of  Such  meager  provisions  against  inundation  suffice  for  the 

rivers.  sparse  population  characterizing  the  lower  stages  of  civiliza- 

tion, but  they  must  be  supplemented  for  the  increasing  den- 
sity of  higher  stages  by  the  embankment  of  the  stream,  to 
protect  also  the  adjacent  fields.  Hence  the  process  of  con- 
fining rivers  within  dikes  goes  back  into  gray  antiquity. 
Those  of  the  Po  and  its  tributaries  were  begun  before  the 
political  history  of  the  Lombardy  plains  commenced.  Strabo 
mentions  the  canals  and  dikes  of  Venetia,  whereby  a  part  of 
the  country  was  drained  and  rendered  tillable.30  The  main 
Po  has  been  embanked  for  centuries  as  far  up  as  Cre- 
mona, a  distance  of  600  miles,  and  the  Adige  to  Verona.31 
But  the  most  gigantic  dike  system  in  the  world  is  that  of  the 
Hoangho,  by  which  a  territory  the  size  of  England  is  won 
from  the  water  for  cultivation.32  The  cost  of  protecting  the 
far  spread  crops  against  the  autumn  floods  has  been  a  large 
annual  expenditure  and  unceasing  watchfulness;  and  this  the 
Chinese  have  paid  for  two  thousand  years,  but  have  not  always 
purchased  immunity.  Year  by  year  the  Yellow  River  mounts 
higher  and  higher  on  its  silted  bed  above  the  surrounding 
lowlands,  increasing  the  strain  on  the  banks  and  the  area  of 
destruction,  when  its  fury  is  uncaged.  The  flood  of  1887 


MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER         327 

covered  an  area  estimated  at  50,000  square  miles,  wiped  out 
of  existence  a  million  people,  and  left  a  greater  number  a 
prey  to  famine.33  So  the  fertile  Chengtu  plain  of  the  Min 
River,  supporting  four  millions  of  people  on  its  2,500  square 
miles  of  area,  owes  its  prosperity  to  the  embanking  and  irri- 
gating works  of  the  engineer  heroes,  Li  Ping  and  his  son, 
who  lived  before  the  Christian  era.  On  the  temple  in  their 
honor  in  the  city  of  Kuan  Hsien  is  Li  Ping's  motto,  incised 
in  gold:  "Dig  the  bed  deep,  keep  the  banks  low."  For 
twenty-one  centuries  these  instructions  have  been  carried  out. 
The  stone  dikes  are  kept  low  to  permit  a  judicious  amount  of 
flooding  for  fertilization,  and  every  year  five  to  six  feet  of 
silt  are  removed  from  the  artificial  channel  of  the  Min.  To 
this  work  the  whole  population*  of  the  Chengtu  plain  con- 
tributes.34 [See  map  page  8.] 

In  such  organized  struggles  to  reduce  the  domain  of  the  Social 
water  and  extend  that  of  the  dry  land,  the  material  gain  £aui    ^ 
is  not  all :  more  significant  by  far  is  the  power  to  co-operate   ,     water 
that  is  developed  in  a  people  by  a  prolonged  war  against 
overwhelming  sea  or  river.     A  common  natural  danger,  con- 
stantly   and   even   regularly   recurring,   necessitates   for   its 
resistance  a  strong  and  sustained  union,  that  draws  men  out 
of  the  barren  individualism  of  a  primitive  people,  and  forces 
them  without  halt  along  the  path  of  civilization.     It  brings 
a  realizing  sense  of  the  superiority  of  common  interests  over 
individual   preferences,   strengthens   the   national  bond,   and 
encourages  voluntary  subservience  to  law. 

This  is  the  social  or  political  gain ;  but  this  is  not  all. 
The  danger  emanating  from  natural  phenomena  has  its  dis- 
coverable laws,  and  therefore  leads  to  a  first  empirical  study 
of  winds,  currents,  seasonal  rainfall  and  the  whole  science  of 
hydraulics.  With  deep  national  insight,  the  Greeks  embodied 
in  their  mythology  the  story  of  Perseus  and  his  destruction 
of  the  sea  monster  who  ravaged  the  coast,  and  Hercules' 
killing  of  the  many-headed  serpent  who  issued  from  the  Ler- 
nean  Marshes  to  lay  waste  the  country  of  Argos.  Even  so 
early  a  writer  as  Strabo  states  that  yet  earlier  authorities 
interpreted  Hercules'  victory  over  the  river  god  of  the  Ache- 
lous  as  the  embankment  of  that  stream  and  the  draining  of 


328 


Control  of 
water  as 
factor  in 
early  civili- 
zations of 
arid  lands. 


its  inundated  delta  tract  by  the  national  benefactor.35  So 
the  Chinese,  whose  land  abounds  in  swamps  and  devastating 
rivers,  have  a  long  list  of  engineer  heroes  who  embanked  and 
drained  for  the  salvation  and  benefit  of  mankind.  It  is  high- 
ly probably  that  the  communal  work  involved  in  the  construc- 
tion of  dikes  and  canals  for  the  control  of  the  Hoangho  floods 
cemented  the  Chinese  nationality  of  that  vast  lowland  plain, 
and  supplied  the  cohesive  force  that  developed  here  at  a  very 
remote  period  a  regularly  organized  state  and  an  advancing 
civilization. 

The  history  of  Egypt  shows  a  similar  effect  of  the  yearly 
inundation  of  the  Nile  Valley.  Here,  as  in  all  rainless  coun- 
tries where  irrigation  must  be  practiced,  the  water  becomes 
a  potent  factor  of  political  union  and  civilization.  Its 
scarcity  necessitates  common  effort  in  the  construction 
and  maintenance  of  irrigation  works,  and  a  central  con- 
trol to  secure  fair  distribution  of  the  water  to  the  fields  of 
the  inhabitants.  A  stimulus  to  progress  is  found  in  the 
presence  of  a  problem,  perennial  as  the  yearly  threatenings 
of  the  Hoangho,  which  demands  the  application  of  human 
intelligence  and  concerted  labor  for  its  solution.  Additional 
arable  land  for  the  growing  population  can  be  secured  only 
by  the  wider  distribution  of  the  fructifying  water;  this  in 
turn  depends  upon  corporate  effort  wisely  directed  and  ably 
controlled.  Every  lapse  in  governmental  efficiency  means  an 
encroachment  of  the  desert  upon  the  alluvial  fields  and  finally 
to  the  river  bank,  as  to-day  in  Mesopotamia. 

The  fact  that  the  earliest  civilizations  have  originated  in 
the  sub-tropical  rainless  districts  of  the  world  has  been  as- 
cribed solely  to  the  regular  and  abundant  returns  to  tillage 
under  irrigation,  as  opposed  to  the  uncertain  crops  under 
variable  meteorological  conditions ;  to  the  consequent  accu- 
mulation of  wealth,  and  the  emancipation  of  man  for  other 
and  higher  activities,  which  follows  his  escape  from  the  agri- 
cultural vicissitudes  of  an  uncertain  climate.  When  Draper 
says:  "Civilization  depends  on  climate  and  agriculture," 
and  "the  civilization  of  Egypt  depended  for  its  commence- 
ment on  the  sameness  and  stability  of  the  African  climate," 
and  again,  "agriculture  is  certain  in  Egypt  and  there  man 


MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER         329 

first  became  civilized,"36  he  seizes  upon  the  conspicuous  fact 
of  a  stable  food  supply  as  the  basis  of  progress,  failing  to 
detect  those  potent  underlying  social  effects  of  the  inunda- 
tions— social  and  political  union  to  secure  the  most  effective 
distribution  of  the  Nile's  blessings  and  to  augment  by  human 
devices  the  area  accessible  to  them,  the  development  of  an 
intelligent  water  economy,  which  ultimately  produced  a  long 
series  of  intellectual  achievements.37 

This  unifying  and  stimulating  national  task  of  utilizing  Cultural 
and  controlling  the  water  was  the  same  task  which  in  various  a: 
forms  promoted  the  early  civilization  of  the  Hoangho  and 
Yangtze  basins,  India,  Mesopotamia,  Persia,  Peru,  Mexico, 
and  that  impressive  region  of  prehistoric  irrigation  canals 
found  in  the  Salt,  Gila  River,  and  upper  Rio  Grande  valleys.38 
Here  the  arid  plateaus  of  the  Cordilleras  between  the  Pueblo 
district  and  Central  America  had  no  forests  in  which  game 
might  be  found;  so  that  the  Indian  hunter  had  to  turn  to 
agriculture  and  a  sedentary  life  beside  his  narrow  irrigated 
fields.  Here  native  civilization  reached  its  highest  grade  in 
North  America.  Here  desert  agriculture  achieved  something 
more  than  a  reliable  food  supply.  It  laid  the  foundation  of 
the  first  steady  integration  of  wandering  Indian  hordes  into 
a  stable,  permanently  organized  society.  Elsewhere  through- 
out the  North  American  continent,  we  see  only  shifting 
groups  of  hunter  and  fisher  folk,  practising  here  and  there  a 
half  nomadic  agriculture  to  supplement  the  chase. 

The  primitive  American  civilization  that  arose  among  the 
Pueblo  Indians  of  New  Mexico  and  Arizona,  the  only  strictly 
sedentary  tribes  relying  exclusively  on  agriculture  north  of 
the  Mexican  plateau,  was  primarily  a  result  of  the  pressure 
put  upon  these  people  by  a  restricted  water  supply.39 
Though  chiefly  offshoots  of  the  wild  Indians  of  the  northern 
plains,  they  have  been  markedly  differentiated  from  their 
wandering  Shoshone  and  Kiowa  kindred  by  local  environ- 
ment.40 Scarcity  of  water  in  those  arid  highlands  and  pau- 
city of  arable  land  forced  them  to  a  carefully  organized  com- 
munity life,  made  them  invest  their  labor  in  irrigation  ditches, 
terraced  gardens  and  walled  orchards,  whereby  they  were  as 
firmly  rooted  in  their  scant  but  fertile  fields  as  were  their 


330         MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER 


Economy 
of  the 
water: 
fisheries. 


Fisheries 
as  factors 
in  mari- 
time ex- 
pansion. 


cotton  plants  and  melon  vines ; 41  while  the  towering  mesas 
protected  their  homes  against  marauding  Ute,  Navajo  and 
Apache.42  This  thread  of  a  deep  underlying  connection  be- 
tween civilization  and  the  control  of  water  can  be  traced 
through  all  prehistoric  America,  as  well  as  through  the 
earliest  cultural  achievements  in  North  Africa  and  Asia. 

The  economy  of  the  water  is  not  confined  to  its  artificial 
distribution  over  arid  fields,  but  includes  also  the  exploita- 
tion of  the  mineral  and  animal  resources  of  the  vast  world 
of  waters,  whether  the  production  of  salt  from  the  sea,  salt 
lakes  and  brine  springs,  the  cultivation  of  oyster  beds,  or  the 
whole  range  of  pelagic  fisheries.  The  animal  life  of  the 
water  is  important  to  man  owing  not  only  to  its  great  abun- 
dance, but  also  to  its  distribution  over  the  coldest  regions  of 
the  globe.  It  furnishes  the  chief  food  supply  of  polar  and 
sub-polar  peoples,  and  therefore  is  accountable  for  the 
far-northern  expansion  of  the  habitable  world.  Even 
the  reindeer  tribes  of  Arctic  Eurasia  could  hardly  sub- 
sist without  the  sea  food  they  get  by  barter  from  the 
fishermen  of  the  coast.  Norway,  where  civilization  has 
achieved  its  utmost  in  exploiting  the  limited  means  of  sub- 
sistence, shows  a  steady  increase  from  south  to  north  in  the 
proportion  of  the  population  dependent  upon  the  harvest  of 
the  deep.  Thus  the  fisheries  engross  44  per  cent,  of  the 
rural  population  in  Nordland  province,  which  is  bisected  by 
the  Arctic  Circle;  over  50  per  cent,  in  Tromso,  and  about 
70  per  cent,  in  Finmarken.  If  the  towns  also  be  included, 
the  percentages  rise,  because  here  fishing  interests  are  espe- 
cially prominent.43  Proximity  to  the  generous  larder  of  the 
ocean  has  determined  the  selection  of  village  sites,  as  we  have 
seen  among  the  coast  Indians  of  British  Columbia  and 
southern  Alaska,  among  all  the  Eskimo,  and  numerous  other 
peoples  of  Arctic  lands.  [See  map  page  153.] 

Not  only  in  polar  but  also  in  temperate  regions,  the  pres- 
ence of  abundant  fishing  grounds  draws  the  people  of  the 
nearest  coast  to  their  wholesale  exploitation,  especially  if  the 
land  resources  are  scant.  Fisheries  then  become  the  starting 
point  or  permanent  basis  of  a  subsequent  wide  maritime 
development,  by  expanding  the  geographical  horizon.  It  was 


MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER         331 

the  search  for  the  purple-yielding  murex  that  first  familiar- 
ized the  Phoenicians  with  the  commercial  and  colonial  pos- 
sibilities of  the  eastern  Mediterranean  coasts.44  The  royal 
dye  of  this  marine  product  has  through  all  the  ages  seemed 
to  color  with  sumptuous  magnificence  the  sordid  dealings  of 
those  Tyrian  traders,  and  constituted  them  an  aristocracy 
of  merchants.  The  shoals  of  tunny  fish,  arriving  every 
spring  in  the  Bosporus,  from  the  north,  drew  the  early 
Greeks  and  Phoenicians  after  them  into  the  cold  and  misty 
Euxine,  and  furnished  the  original  impulse  to  both  these 
peoples  for  the  establishment  of  fishing  and  trading  stations 
on  its  uncongenial  shores.45  To  the  fisheries  of  the  Baltic 
and  especially  to  the  summer  catch  of  the  migratory  herring, 
which  in  vast  numbers  visited  the  shores  of  Pomerania  and 
southern  Sweden  to  spawn,  the  Hanse  Towns  of  Germany 
owed  much  of  their  prosperity.  Salt  herring,  even  in  the 
twelfth  century,  was  the  chief  single  article  of  their  exchanges 
with  Catholic  Europe,  which  made  a  strong  demand  for  the 
fish,  owing  to  the  numerous  fast  days.  When,  in  1425,  by 
one  of  those  unexplained  vagaries  of  animal  life,  the  herring 
abandoned  the  Baltic  and  selected  the  North  Sea  for  its 
summer  destination,  a  new  support  was  given  to  the  wealth 
of  the  Netherlands.46  There  is  a  considerable  amount  of 
truth  in  the  saying  that  Amsterdam  was  built  on  herrings. 
New  England,  with  an  unproductive  soil  at  home,  but  near 
by  in  the  sea  a  long  line  of  piscine  feeding  grounds  in  the 
submarine  banks  stretching  from  Cape  Cod  to  Cape  Race 
and  beyond,  found  her  fisheries  the  starting  point  and  base 
of  her  long  round  of  exchanges,  a  constant  factor  in  her  com- 
mercial and  industrial  evolution.47 

Fisheries  have  always  been  the  nurseries  of  seamen,  and  Fisheries  as 
hence  have  been  encouraged  and  protected  by  governments  nurseries  of 
as  providing  an  important  element  of  national  strength.    The  seamen' 
Newfoundland  Banks  were  the  training  school  which  supplied 
the  merchant  marine  and  later  the  Revolutionary  navy  of 
colonial  New  England ;  48  ever  since  the  establishment  of  the 
Republic,  they  have  been  forced  into  prominence  in  our  inter- 
national negotiations   with  the  United   Kingdom,   with   the 
object  of  securing  special  privileges,  because  the  government 


332 


MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER 


Anthropo- 
geographic 
importance 
of  navi- 
gation. 


has  recognized  them  as  a  factor  in  the  American  navy.  The 
causal  connection  between  fisheries  and  naval  efficiency 
was  recognized  in  England  in  the  early  years  of  Elizabeth's 
reign,  by  an  act  aiming  to  encourage  fisheries  by  the  remission 
of  custom  duties  to  native  fishermen,  by  the  imposition  of  a 
high  tariff  on  the  importation  of  foreign  fish  in  foreign  ves- 
sels, and  finally  by  a  legislative  enforcement  of  fasts  to  in- 
crease the  demand  for  fish,  although  any  belief  in  the  reli- 
gious efficacy  of  fasts  was  frankly  disclaimed.  Thus  an 
artificial  demand  for  fish  was  created,  with  the  result  that  a 
report  on  the  success  of  the  Fishery  Acts  stated  that  a  thou- 
sand additional  men  had  been  attracted  to  the  fishing  trade,, 
and  were  consequently  "ready  to  serve  in  Her  Majesty's 
ships."  49 

The  fishing  of  the  North  Sea,  especially  on  the  Dogger 
Bank,  is  participated  in  by  all  the  bordering  countries,  Eng- 
land, the  Netherlands,  Germany  and  Belgium;  and  is  valued 
equally  on  account  of  the  food  supply  which  it  yields  and 
as  a  school  of  seamen.50  The  Pomors  or  "coasters"  of  Arc- 
tic Russia,  who  dwell  along  the  shores  of  the  White  Sea 
and  live  wholly  by  fisheries,  have  all  their  taxes  remitted 
and  receive  free  wood  from  the  crown  forests  for  the  con- 
struction of  their  ships,  on  the  condition  that  they  serve  on 
call  in  the  imperial  navy.51  The  history  of  Japan  affords 
the  most  striking  illustration  of  the  power  of  fisheries  alone 
to  maintain  maritime  efficiency ;  for  when  by  the  seclusion  act 
of  1624  all  merchant  vessels  were  destroyed,  the  marine  re- 
stricted to  small  fishing  and  coasting  vessels,  and  intercourse 
confined  to  Japan's  narrow  island  world,  the  fisheries  never- 
theless kept  alive  that  intimacy  with  the  sea  and  preserved 
the  nautical  efficiency  that  was  destined  to  be  a  decisive  fac- 
tor in  the  development  of  awakened  Japan. 

The  resources  of  the  sea  first  tempted  man  to  trust 
himself  to  its  dangerous  surface;  but  their  rewards  were 
slight  in  comparison  with  the  wealth  of  experiences  and 
influences  to  which  he  fell  heir,  after  he  learned  to  convert 
the  barrier  of  the  untrod  waste  into  a  highway  for  his  sail- 
borne  keel.  It  is  therefore  true,  as  many  anthropologists 
maintain,  that  after  the  discovery  of  fire  the  next  most  im- 


MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER         333 

portant  step  in  the  progress  of  the  human  race  was  the  in- 
vention of  the  boat.  No  other  has  had  such  far-reaching 
results.  Since  water  covers  three-fourths  of  the  earth's  sur- 
face and  permits  the  land-masses  to  rise  only  as  islands  here 
and  there,  it  presents  to  man  for  his  nautical  ventures  three 
times  the  area  that  he  commands  for  his  terrestrial  habitat. 
On  every  side,  the  break  of  the  waves  and  the  swell  of  the 
tides  block  his  wanderings,  unless  he  has  learned  to  make 
the  water  carry  him  to  his  distant  goal.  Spacially,  there- 
fore, the  problem  and  the  task  of  navigation  is  the  most 
widespread  and  persistent  in  the  history  of  mankind.  The 
numerous  coaling-stations  which  England  has  scattered  over 
the  world  are  mute  witnesses  to  this  spacial  supremacy  of 
the  water,  to  the  length  of  ocean  voyages,  and  the  power  of 
the  ocean  to  divide  and  unite.  But  had  the  proportion  of 
la»d  and  water  been  reversed,  the  world  would  have  been 
poorer,  deprived  of  all  these  possibilities  of  segregation  and 
differentiation,  of  stimulus  to  exchange  and  far-reaching  in- 
tercourse, and  of  ingenious  inventions  which  the  isolating 
ocean  has  caused.  Without  this  ramifying  barrier  between 
the  different  branches  of  the  human  family,  these  would  have 
resembled  each  other  more  closely,  but  at  the  cost  of  develop- 
ment. The  mere  multiplicity  of  races  and  sub-races  ha? 
sharpened  the  struggle  for  existence  and  endowed  the  sur- 
vivors with  higher  qualities.  But  it  was  navigation  that  re- 
leased primitive  man  from  the  seclusion  of  his  own  island  or 
continent,  stimulated  and  facilitated  the  intercourse  of 
peoples,  and  enabled  the  human  race  to  establish  itself  in 
every  habitable  part  of  the  world. 


NOTES    TO    CHAPTER    X 

1.  Census  of   the  Philippine  Islands,  Vol.   I,  pp.   465,  563-567,  573. 
Washington,  1905. 

2.  Sir   John   Lubbock,    Prehistoric   Times,   pp.    173-223.      New    York, 
1872. 

3.  Ferdinand  Keller,  Lake  Dwellings,  Vol.  I,  pp.   2-7,  576.     London, 
1876.    English  Lake  Dwellings,  Westminster  Revieio,  pp.  337-347.     1887. 

4.  P.  W.  Joyce,  A  Social  History  of  Ancient  Ireland,  Vol.  II,  pp.  65- 
6fi.     London,  1903. 


334         MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER 

5.  Herodotus,  V.  16. 

6.  Alexander  von  Humboldt,  Aspects  of  Nature,  pp.  148-149.     Trans- 
lated by  Mrs.  Sabine,  Philadelphia,  1849.     E.  F.  im  Thurn,  Among  the 
Indians  of  Guiana,  p.  203.    London,  1883. 

7.  Sir  Thomas  Holdich,  India,  p.  184.    London,  1905. 

8.  Verney  L.  Cameron,  Across  Africa,  pp.  332-334.     London,  1885. 

9.  David   and  Charles   Livingstone,   Narrative   of   Expedition   to   the 
Zambezi,  p.  414.    New  York,  1866. 

10.  Census  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  VoL  I,  pp.  464-466,  565.     Wash 
ington,  1905. 

11.  Stanford's  Australasia,  Vol.  II,  pp.  256-257.    London,  1894. 

12.  A.  B.  Wallace,  The  Malay  Archipelago,  pp.  368,  381.     New  York, 
1869. 

13.  Eatzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  pp.  262-263,  344.     London, 
1896-1898. 

14.  Richard  Semon,  In  the  Australian  Bush,  pp.  340-342,  347.     Lon- 
don, 1899. 

15.  John  L.  Stoddard,  Lectures,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  311.     Boston,  1903. 

16.  John    Barrows,    Travels    in    China,    pp.    377-379.     Philadelphia, 
1805. 

17.  William  M.  Wood,  Fankwei,  pp.  169-174.     New  York,  1859. 

18.  Edmondo  de  Amicis,  Holland  and  Its  People,  pp.  4-13.   New  York, 
1890. 

19.  G.  P.  Marsh,  The  Earth  as  Modified  by  Human  Action,  chap.  IV, 
pp.  330-352.     New  York,  1871. 

20.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  pp.  106-108.     London,  1903. 

21.  Roscher,  National-Oekonomik  des  Ackerbaues,  p.  127,  Note  1.  Stutt- 
gart, 1888. 

22.  Elisee  Reclus,  Europe,  Vol.   IV,  pp.   222-223.     New  York,   1886. 
Miller  and  Skertchley,  The  Fenland,  Past  and  Present,  pp.  7-9.    London, 
1878. 

23.  Ibid.,  pp.  145-147. 

24.  Sir  Samuel  W.   Baker,  The  Albert  Nyanza,  Great  Basin  of  the 
Nile,  pp.  49-50.     London  and  Philadelphia,  1866. 

25.  Diodorus  Siculus,  Book  I,  chap.  Ill,  p.   41.     Translated  by  G. 
Booth.     London,  1814. 

26.  David  Livingstone,  Missionary  Travels  in  Africa,  pp.  234-236,  239, 
272.     New  York,  1858. 

27.  Felix  Dubois,  Timbuctoo,  pp.  51-55,  145.     New  York,  1896. 

28.  Isabella  B.  Bishop,  The  Yangtze  Valley  and  Beyond,  Vol.  I,  pp.  8, 
10,  97.     London  and  New  York,  1900. 

29.  Cyrus  Thomas,  Mound  Explorations,  pp.  626,  650-653.     Twelfth 
Annual  Report  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  Washington,  1894. 

30.  Strabo,  Book  V,  chap.  I,  4. 

31.  W.  Deecke,  Italy,  pp.  88-89.     London,  1904. 

32.  John  Barrows,  Travels  in  China,  p.  349.     Philadelphia,  1805. 

33.  Meredith  Townsend,  Asia  and  Europe,  pp.  278-284.     New  York, 
1904. 

34.  Isabella  B.  Bishop,  The  Yangtze  Valley  and  Beyond,  Vol.  II,  pp. 
72-73,  76-81.     New  York  and  London,  1900.     For  the  future  of  land 


MAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  WATER         335 

reclamation,  see  N.  S.  Shaler,  Man  and  the  Earth,  chap.  V.     New  York, 
1906. 

35.  Strabo,  Book  X,  chap.  II,  19. 

36.  John  W.  Draper,  Intellectual  Development  of  Europe,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
84-86.     New  York,  1876. 

37.  Winwood  Keade,  The  Martyrdom  of  Man,  pp.  9-17.   Eighth  Edition, 
New  York. 

38.  Irrigation,  Thirteenth  Eeport  of  the  U.  S.  Geological  Survey,  Part 
III,    pp.    133-135.      Washington,   1895.      J.    W.    Powell,    Twenty-third 
Annual  Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  pp.  Xll,  xm.     Washington, 
1904.    Cosmos  Mindeleff,  Aboriginal  Bemains  in  the  Verde  Valley,  Ari- 
zona, pp.  187,  192-194,  238-245.     Thirteenth  Annual  Eeport  of  Bureau  of 
Ethnology.     Washington,  1896.     V.  Mindeleff,  Pueblo  Architecture,  pp. 
80,  216-217.     Eighth  Annual  Eeport  of  Bureau  of  Ethnology.     Washing- 
ton,  1891.     F.  W.  Hodge,  Prehistoric  Irrigation  in  Arizona,  American 
Anthropologist,  July,  1893. 

39.  McGee  and  Thomas,  Prehistoric  North  America,  pp.  105-106,  113, 
118,  120-144,  478.     Philadelphia,  1905. 

40.  Eleventh  Census,  Eeport  on  the  Indians,  pp.  49,  161,  415.   Washing- 
ton, 1894.     D.  G.  Brinton,  The  American  Eace,  pp.  116-117.     Philadel- 
phia, 1901. 

41r  Ibid.,  pp.  161,  181,  182,  188,  191,  193,  198,  410,  441-445.  M.  C. 
(Stevenson,  The  Zuni  Indians,  pp.  351-354.  Twenty-third  Annual  Eeport 
of  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  Washington,  1904. 

42.  Ibid.,  pp.  13-14.     H.  H.  Bancroft,  The  Native  Eaces,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
539-547.     San  Francisco,  1886. 

43.  Norway,   Official   Publication,  pp.   99-100.  Christiania,   1900. 

44.  Ernst  Curtius,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  I,  pp.  49-50.     New  York. 

45.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  440. 

46.  Dietrich    Schaefer,    Die   Hansestadte   und   Konig    Waldemar   von 
Danemark,    pp.    255-257.      Jena,    1879.      Helen    Zimmern,    Story   of   the 
Hansa  Towns,  pp.  26-27.    New  York,  1895. 

47.  W.  B.  Weeden,  Social  and  Economic  History  of  New  England, 
Vol.  I,  pp.  17,  18,  90,  91,  128-135,  139.    Boston,  1899. 

48.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  245. 

49.  H.  D.  Traill,  Social  England,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  363-364,  540.     London 
and  New  York,  1895. 

50.  J.  Partsch,  Central   Europe,  p.   311.     London,   19Q3. 

51.  Alexander  P.   Engelhardt,  A  Eussian  Province  of  the  North,  pp. 
54-71.     From  the  Eussian.     London,  1899. 


CHAPTER  XI 
THE  ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 

Rivers  as  To  a  large  view,  rivers  appear  in  two  aspects.     They  are 

interme-         either  part  of  the  general  water  envelope  of  the  earth,  ex- 

tensions of  seas  and  estuaries  back  into  the  up-hill  reaches 
tween  land 


and  sea.  °^  ^e  lftnd>  feeders  of  the  ocean,  roots  which  it  spreads 
out  over  the  surface  of  the  continents,  not  only  to  gather  its 
nourishment  from  ultimate  sources  in  spring  and  glacier, 
but  also  to  bring  down  to  the  coast  the  land-born  products 
of  the  interior  to  feed  a  sea-born  commerce;  or  rivers  are 
>ne  of  the  land  forms,  merely  water  filling  valley  channels, 
serving  to  drain  the  fields  and  turn  the  mills  of  men.  In  the 
first  aspect  their  historical  importance  has  been  both  akin 
and  linked  to  that  of  the  ocean,  despite  the  freshness  and 
smaller  volume  of  their  waters  and  the  unvarying  direction 
of  their  currents.  The  ocean  draws  them  and  their  trade 
to  its  vast  basin  by  the  force  of  gravity.  It  unites  with  its 
own  the  history  of  every  log-stream  in  Laurentian  or  Hima- 
layan forest,  as  it  formerly  linked  the  beaver-dammed  brooks 
of  wintry  Canada  with  the  current  of  trade  following  the 
Gulf  Stream  to  Europe. 

Where  sea  and  river  meet,  Nature  draws  no  sharp  divid- 
ing line.  Here  the  indeterminate  boundary  zone  is  conspic- 
uous. The  fresh  water  stream  merges  into  brackish  estuary, 
estuary  into  saltier  inlet  and  inlet  into  briny  ocean. 
Closely  confined  sea  basins  like  the  Black  and  Baltic,  located 
in  cool  regions  of  slight  evaporation  and  fed  from  a  large 
catchment  basin,  approach  in  their  reduced  salinity  the  fresh 
water  lakes  and  coastal  lagoons  in  which  rivers  stretch  out 
to  rest  on  their  way  to  the  ocean.  The  muddy  current  of 
the  Yangtze  Kiang  colors  the  Yellow  Sea,  and  warns  in- 
coming Chinese  junks  of  the  proximity  of  land  many  hours 
before  the  low-lying  shores  can  be  discerned.1  Columbus, 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        337 

sailing  along  the  Caribbean  coast  of  South  America  off  the 
Orinoco  mouth,  found  the  ocean  waters  brackish  and  sur- 
mised the  presence  of  a  large  river  and  therefore  a  large 
continent  on  his  left.2 

The  transitional  form  between  stream  and  pelagic  inlet 
found  in  every  river  mouth  is  emphasized  where  strong  tidal 
currents  carry  the  sea  far  into  these  channels  of  the  land. 
The  tides  move  up  the  St.  Lawrence  River  430  miles  (700 
kilometers)  or  half  way  between  Montreal  and  Quebec,  and 
up  the  Amazon  600  miles  (1,000  kilometers).  Owing  to  their 
resemblance  to  pelagic  channels,  the  estuaries  of  the  Ameri- 
can rivers  with  their  salty  tide  were  repeatedly  mistaken,  in 
the  period  of  discoveries,  for  the  Northwest  Passage  to  the 
Pacific.  Newport  in  1608  explored  the  broad  sluggish  course 
of  the  James  River  in  his  search  for  a  western  ocean.  Henry 
Hudson  ascended  the  Hudson  River  almost  as  far  as  Albany, 
before  he  discovered  that  this  was  no  maritime  pathway, 
like  the  Bosporus  or  Dardanelles,  leading  to  an  ulterior 
sea.  The  long  tidal  course  of  the  St.  Lawrence  westward 
into  the  heart  of  the  continent  fed  La  Salle's  dream  of  find- 
ing here  a  water  route  to  the  Pacific,  and  fixed  his  village 
of  "La  Chine"  above  the  rapids  at  Montreal  as  a  signpost 
pointing  the  way  to  the  Indies  and  Cathay.  In  the  same 
way  a  tidal  river  at  the  head  of  Cook's  Inlet  on  the  Alaskan 
coast  was  mistaken  for  a  Northeast  Passage,  not  by  Captain 
Cook  but  by  his  fellow  officers,  on  his  Pacific  voyage  of 
1776-1780;  and  it  was  followed  for  several  days  before  its 
character  as  a  river  was  established.3 

Rivers  have  always  been  the  great  intermediaries  between  ^ea  navi* 

land  and  sea,  for  in  the  ocean  all  find  their  common  desti-  " 

.  .  merges 

nation.     Until  the  construction  of  giant  steamers  in  recent  -mto  river 

years,  sea  navigation  has  always  passed  without  break  into  navigation, 
river  navigation.  Sailing  vessels  are  carried  by  the  trade 
wind  600  miles  up  the  Orinoco  to  San  Fernando.  Alex- 
ander's discovery  of  the  Indus  River  led  by  almost  inevitable 
sequence  to  the  rediscovery  of  the  Eastern  sea  route,  which 
in  turn  ran  from  India  through  the  Strait  of  Oman  and 
the  Persian  Gulf  up  the  navigable  course  of  the  Euphrates 
to  the  elbow  of  the  river  at  Thapsacus.  Enterprising  sea 


338        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 


Historical 
importance 
of  seas 
and  oceans 
influenced 
by  their 
debouching 
streams. 


folk  have  always  used  rivers  as  natural  continuations  of  the 
marine  highway  into  the  land.  The  Humber  estuary  and 
its  radiating  group  of  streams  led  the  invading  Angles  in 
the  sixth  century  into  the  heart  of  Britain.4  The  long  navi- 
gable courses  of  the  rivers  of  France  exposed  that  whole 
country  to  the  depredations  of  the  piratical  Northmen  in 
the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries.  Up  every  river  they  came, 
up  the  Scheldt  into  Flanders,  the  Seine  to  Paris  and  the 
Marne  to  Meaux;  up  the  Loire  to  Orleans,  the  Garonne  to 
Toulouse  and  the  Rhone  to  Valence.5  So  the  Atlantic  rivers 
of  North  America  formed  the  lines  of  European  exploration 
and  settlement.  The  St.  Lawrence  brought  the  French  from 
the  ocean  into  the  Great  Lakes  basin,  whose  low,  swampy 
watershed  they  readily  crossed  in  their  light  canoes  to  the 
tributaries  of  the  Mississippi ;  and  scarcely  had  they  reached 
the  "Father  of  Waters"  before  they  were  planting  the  flag 
of  France  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  at  its  mouth.  The  Tupi 
Indians  of  South  America,  a  genuine  water-race,  moved  from 
their  original  home  on  the  Paraguay  headstream  of  the 
La  Plata  down  to  its  mouth,  then  expanded  northward  along 
the  coast  of  Brazil  in  their  small  canoes  to  the  estuary  of 
the  Amazon,  thence  up  its  southern  tributary,  the  Tapajos, 
and  in  smaller  numbers  up  the  main  stream  to  the  foot  of 
the  Andes,  where  detached  groups  of  the  race  are  still  found.8 
So  the  migrations  of  the  Carib  river  tribes  led  them  from 
their  native  seats  in  eastern  Brazil  down  the  Xingu  to  the 
Amazon,  thence  out  to  sea  and  along  the  northern  coast 
of  South  America,  thence  inland  once  more,  up  the  Orinoco 
to  the  foot  of  the  Andes,  into  the  lagoon  of  Maracaibo  and 
up  the  Magdalena.  Meanwhile  their  settlements  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Orinoco  threw  off  spores  of  pirate  colonies  to  the  ad- 
jacent islands  and  finally,  in  the  time  of  Columbus,  to  Porto 
Rico  and  Haiti.7  [See  map  page  101.] 

So  intimate  is  this  connection  between  marine  and  inland 
waterways,  that  the  historical  and  economic  importance  of 
seas  and  oceans  is  noticeably  influenced  by  the  size  of  their 
drainage  basins  and  the  navigability  of  their  debouching 
rivers.  This  is  especially  true  of  enclosed  seas.  The  only 
historical  importance  attached  to  the  Caspian's  inland  basin 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        339 

is  that  inherent  in  the  Volga's  mighty  stream.  The  Mediter- 
ranean has  always  suffered  from  its  paucity  of  long  river 
highways  to  open  for  it  a  wide  hinterland.  This  lack 
checked  the  spread  of  its  cultural  influences  and  finally 
helped  to  arrest  its  historical  development.  If  we  compare 
the  record  of  the  Adriatic  and  the  Black  seas,  the  first  a 
sharply  walled  cul  de  sac,  the  second  a  center  of  long  radiat- 
ing streams,  sending  out  the  Danube  to  tap  the  back  country 
of  the  Adriatic  and  the  Dnieper  to  draw  on  that  of  the  Baltic, 
we  find  that  the  smaller  sea  has  had  a  limited  range  of  influ- 
ence, a  concentrated  brilliant  history,  precocious  and  short- 
lived as  is  that  of  all  limited  areas ;  that  the  Euxine  has  exer- 
cised more  far-reaching  influences,  despite  a  slow  and  still 
unfinished  development.  The  Black  Sea  rivers  in  ancient 
times  opened  their  countries  to  such  elements  of  Hellenic  cul- 
ture as  might  penetrate  from  the  Greek  trading  colonies  at 
their  mouths,  especially  the  Greek  forms  of  Christianity.  It 
was  the  Danube  that  in  the  fourth  century  carried  Arianism, 
born  of  the  philosophic  niceties  of  Greek  thought,  to  the  bar- 
barians of  southern  Germany,  and  made  Unitarians  of  the 
Burgundians  and  Visigoths  of  southern  Gaul.8  The  Dnieper 
carried  the  religion  of  the  Greek  Church  to  the  Russian  princes 
at  Kief,  Smolensk,  and  Moscow.  Owing  to  the  southward 
course  of  its  great  rivers,  Russia  has  found  the  crux  of  her 
politics  in  the  Black  Sea,  ever  since  the  tenth  century  when  the 
barbarians  from  Kiev  first  appeared  before  Constantinople. 
This  sea  has  had  for  her  a  higher  economic  importance  than 
the  Baltic,  despite  the  latter's  location  near  the  cultural 
center  of  western  Europe. 

In  other  seas,  too,  rivers  play  the  same  part  of  extend-  Baltic  and 
ing  their  tributary  areas  and  therefore  enhancing  their  his-  White  Sea 
torical    significance.      The    disadvantages    of    the    Baltic's 
smaller  size  and  far-northern  location,  as  compared  with  the 
Mediterranean,  were  largely  compensated  for  by  the  series 
of  big  streams  draining  into  it  from  the  south,  and  bringing 
out   from   a  vast   hinterland  the  bulky   necessaries   of   life. 
Hence  the  Hanseatic  League  of  the  Middle  Ages,  which  had 
its   origin   among  the   southern   coast  towns    of   the  Baltic 
from  Lubeck  to  Riga,  throve  on  the  combined  trade  of  sea 


3-10        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 


Atlantic 
and  Pacific 
rivers. 


Lack  of 
coast  artic- 
ulations 

supplied 
by  rivers. 


and  river.9  The  mouths  of  the  Scheldt,  Rhine,  Weser,  Elbe 
and  Thames  long  concentrated  in  themselves  the  economic, 
cultural  and  historical  development  of  the  North  Sea  basin. 
So  the  White  Sea,  despite  its  sub-polar  location,  is  valuable 
to  Russia  for  two  reasons ;  it  affords  a  politically  open  port, 
and  it  receives  the  Northern  Dwina,  which  is  navigable  for 
river  steamers  from  Archangel  south  to  Vologda,  a  distance 
of  six  hundred  miles,  and  carries  the  export  trade  of  a  large 
territory.10  Similarly  in  recent  years,  Bering  Sea  has  gained 
unwonted  commercial  activity  because  the  Yukon  River 
serves  as  a  waterway  1,370  miles  long  to  the  Klondike  gold 
fields. 

If  we  compare  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  oceans  in  aspect 
to  their  rivers,  we  find  that  the  narrow  Atlantic  has  a  drain- 
age basin  of  over  19,000,000  square  miles  as  opposed  to  the 
8,660,000  square  miles  of  drainage  area  commanded  by  the 
vastly  larger  Pacific.  The  Pacific  is  for  the  most  part 
rimmed  by  mountains,  discharging  into  the  ocean  only  mad 
torrents  or  rapid-broken  streams.  The  Atlantic,  bordered 
by  gently  sloping  plains  of  wide  extent,  receives  rivers  that 
for  the  most  part  pursue  a  long  and  leisurely  course  to  the 
sea.  Therefore,  the  commercial  and  cultural  influences  of 
the  Atlantic  extend  from  the  Rockies  and  Andes  almost  to 
the  heart  of  Russia,  and  by  the  Nile  highway  they  even 
invade  the  seclusion  of  Africa.  Through  the  long  reach  of 
its  rivers,  therefore,  the  Atlantic  commands  a  land  area 
twice  as  great  as  that  of  the  Pacific;  and  by  reason  of  this 
fundamental  geographic  advantage,  it  will  retain  the  his- 
torical preeminence  that  it  so  early  secured.  The  develop- 
ment of  the  World  Ocean  will  mean  the  exploitation  of  the 
Pacific  trade  from  the  basis  of  the  Atlantic,  the  domination 
of  the  larger  ocean  by  the  historic  peoples  of  the  smaller, 
because  these  peoples  have  wider  and  more  accessible  lands 
as  the  base  of  their  maritime  operations. 

The  geographic  influence  of  abundant  rivers  navigable 
from  the  sea  is  closely  akin  to  that  of  highly  articulated 
coasts.  The  effect  of  the  Hardanger  or  Sogne  Fiord,  ad- 
mitting ocean  steamers  a  hundred  miles  into  the  interior  of 
Norway,  is  similar  to  that  of  the  Elbe  and  Weser  estuaries, 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        3-il 

which  admit  the  largest  vessels  sixty  miles  upstream  to 
Hamburg  and  Bremen.  Since  river  inlets  can,  to  a  certain 
extent,  supply  the  place  of  marine  inlets,  from  the  stand- 
point of  anthropo-geographic  theory  and  of  human  practice, 
a  land  dissected  by  navigable  rivers  can  be  grouped  with 
one  dissected  by  arms  of  the  sea.  South  America  and  Africa 
are  alike  in  the  unbroken  contour  of  their  coasts,  but  strong- 
ly contrasted  in  the  character  of  their  rivers.  Hence  the 
two  continents  present  the  extremes  of  accessibility  and  in- 
accessibility. South  America,  most  richly  endowed  of  all 
the  continents  with  navigable  streams,  receiving  ocean  ves- 
sels three  thousand  miles  up  the  Amazon  as  far  as  Tabatinga 
in  Peru,  and  smaller  steamers  up  the  Orinoco  to  the  spurs 
of  the  Andes,  was  known  in  its  main  features  to  explorers 
fifty  years  after  its  discovery.  Africa,  historically  the  oldest 
of  continents,  but  cursed  with  a  mesa  form  which  converts 
nearly  every  river  into  a  plunging  torrent  on  its  approach 
to  the  sea,  kept  its  vast  interior  till  the  last  century  wrapped 
in  utmost  gloom.  China,  amply  supplied  with  smaller  lit- 
toral indentations  but  characterized  by  a  paucity  of  larger 
inlets,  finds  compensation  in  the  long  navigable  course  of  the 
Yangtze  Kiang.  This  river  extends  the  landward  reach  of 
the  Yellow  Sea  630  miles  inland  to  Hanchow,  where  ocean- 
going vessels  take  on  cargoes  of  tea  and  silk  for  Europe 
and  America,11  and  pay  for  them  in  Mexican  dollars,  the 
coin  of  the  coast.  Hence  it  is  lined  with  free  ports  all  the 
way  from  Shanghai  at  its  mouth  to  Ichang,  a  thousand 
miles  up  its  course.12 

Navigable  rivers  opening  passages  directly  from  the  sea 
are  obviously  nature-made  gates  and  paths  into  wholly  new    lg  ' 
countries ;  but  the  accessibility  with  which  they  endow  a  land  Qj  commer_ 
becomes  later  a  permanent  factor  in  its  cultural  and  economic  cial  pre- 
development,  a  factor  that  remains  constantly  though  less  eminence, 
conspicuously  operative  when  railroads  have  done  their  ut- 
most  to   supplant   water   transportation.      The   importance 
of  inland  waterways  for  local  and  foreign  trade  and  inter- 
course has  everywhere  been   recognized.      The  peoples  who 
have    long    maintained    preeminence    among    the    commercial 
and   maritime   nations   of   the  world  have   owed   this  in  no 


342        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 


Importance 
of  rivers 
in  large 
countries. 


small  part  to  the  command  of  these  natural  highways,  which 
have  served  to  give  the  broad  land  basis  necessary  for 
permanent  commercial  ascendency.  This  has  been  the 
history  of  England,  Holland,  France  and  the  recent 
record  of  Germany.  The  medieval  League  of  the  Rhine 
Cities  flourished  by  reason  of  the  Rhone-Rhine  highway 
across  western  Europe.  The  Hanseatic  League,  from  Bruges 
all  the  way  east  to  Russian  Novgorod,  owed  their  brilliant 
commercial  career,  not  only  to  the  favorable  maritime  field 
in  the  enclosed  sea  basins  in  front  of  them,  but  also  to  the 
series  of  long  navigable  rivers  behind  them  from  the  Scheldt 
to  the  Neva  and  Volchov.  Wherefore  we  find  the  League, 
originally  confined  to  coast  towns,  drawing  into  the  federa- 
tion numerous  cities  located  far  up  these  rivers,  such  as 
Ghent,  Cologne,  Magdeburg,  Breslau,  Cracow,  Pskof  and 
Novgorod.13 

In  countries  of  large  area,  where  commerce  and  inter- 
course must  cover  great  distances,  these  natural  and  there- 
fore cheap  highways  assume  paramount  importance,  espe- 
cially in  the  forest  and  agricultural  stages  of  development, 
when  the  products  of  the  land  are  bulky  in  proportion  to 
their  value.  Small  countries  with  deeply  indented  coasts,  like 
Greece,  Norway,  Scotland,  New  England,  Chile,  and  Japan, 
can  forego  the  advantage  of  big  river  systems ;  but  in  Russia, 
Siberia,  China,  India,  Canada,  the  United  States,  Venezuela, 
Brazil  and  Argentine,  the  history  of  the  country,  economic 
and  political,  is  indissolubly  connected  with  that  of  its  great 
rivers.  The  storm  center  of  the  French  and  English  wars  in 
America  was  located  on  the  upper  Hudson,  because  this 
stream  enabled  the  English  colonies  to  tap  the  fur  trade  of 
the  Great  Lakes,  and  because  it  commanded  the  Mohawk 
Valley,  the  easiest  and  most  obvious  path  for  expansion  into 
the  interior  of  the  continent.  The  Spanish,  otherwise  con- 
fining their  activities  in  South  America  to  the  Caribbean  dis- 
trict and  the  civilized  regions  of  the  Andean  highlands, 
established  settlements  at  the  mouth  of  the  La  Plata  River, 
because  this  stream  afforded  an  approach  from  the  Atlantic 
side  toward  the  Potosi  mines  on  the  Bolivian  Plateau.  The 
Yangtze  Kiang,  that  great  waterway  leading  from  the  sea 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        343 

across  the  breadth  of  China  and  the  one  valuable  river  ad- 
junct of  maritime  trade  in  the  whole  Orient,  was  early  appro- 
priated by  the  discerning  English  as  the  British  "sphere  of 
influence." 

No  other  equally  large  area  of  the  earth  is  so  generously  Rivers  as 
equipped  by  nature  for  the  production  and  distribution  of  highways 
the  articles  of  commerce  as  southern  Canada  and  that  part  °. 
of  the  United  States  lying  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains. 
The  simple  build  of  the  North  American  continent,  consist- 
ing of  a  broad  central  trough  between  distant  mountain 
ranges,  and  characterized  by  gentle  slopes  to  the  Atlantic 
Ocean  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  has  generated  great  and  small 
rivers  with  easy-going  currents,  that  everywhere  opened  up 
the  land  to  explorer,  trader  and  settler.  The  rate  of  ex- 
pansion from  the  "Europe-fronting  shore"  of  the  continent 
was  everywhere  in  direct  proportion  to  the  length  of  the 
rivers  first  appropriated  by  the  colonists.  North  of  Chesa- 
peake Bay  the  lure  to  landward  advance  was  the  fur  trade. 
The  Atlantic  rivers  of  the  coast  pre-empted  by  the  English 
were  cut  short  by  the  Appalachian  wall.  They  opened  up 
only  restricted  fur  fields  which  were  soon  exhausted,  so  that 
the  migrant  trapper  was  here  early  converted  into  the  agri- 
cultural settler,  his  shifting  camp  fire  into  the  hearthstone 
of  the  farmhouse.  Expansion  was  slow  but  solid.  The 
relatively  small  area  rendered  accessible  by  their  streams  be- 
came compactly  filled  by  the  swelling  tide  of  immigrants 
and  the  rapid  natural  increase  of  population.  In  sharp 
contrast  to  this  development,  the  long  waterway  of  the  St. 
Lawrence  and  the  Great  Lakes  leading  to  the  still  vaster 
river  system  of  the  Mississippi  betrayed  the  fur-trading 
French  into  excessive  expansion,  and  enabled  them  to  appro- 
priate but  not  to  hold  a  vast  extent  of  territory.  A  hun- 
dred years  after  the  arrival  of  Champlain  at  Montreal, 
they  were  planting  their  fur  stations  on  Lake  Superior  and 
the  Mississippi,  1,400  miles  (2,300  kilometers)  back  from  the 
coast,  at  a  time  when  the  English  settlements  had  advanced 
little  beyond  tide-water.  And  when  after  1770  the  westward 
movement  swept  the  backwoodsmen  of  the  English  colonies 
over  the  Appalachian  barrier  to  the  Ohio,  Cumberland  and 


344        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 


Siberian 
rivers  and 
Russian 
expansion. 


Tennessee,  these  long  westward  flowing  streams  carried  them 
rapidly  on  to  the  Mississippi,  communicated  the  mobility  and 
restlessness  of  their  own  currents  to  the  eager  pioneer,  and 
their  capacity  to  master  great  distances;  so  that  in  forty 
short  years,  by  1810,  settlements  were  creeping  up  the  west- 
ern tributaries  of  the  Mississippi.  The  abundant  water  com- 
munication in  the  Mississippi  Valley,  which  even  for  present 
large  river  craft  contains  15,410  miles  of  navigable  streams 
and  which  had  therefore  a  far  greater  mileage  in  the  day  of 
canoe  and  flatboat,  afforded  outlet  for  bulky,  backwoods 
produce  to  the  sea  at  New  Orleans.  When  the  English  ac- 
quired Canada  in  1763,  they  straightway  fell  under  the 
sway  of  its  harsh  climate  and  long  river  systems,  taking  up 
the  life  of  the  fur  trader ;  they  followed  the  now  scarcer  pelts 
from  the  streams  of  Superior  westward  by  Lake  Winni- 
peg and  along  the  path  of  the  Saskatchewan  River  straight 
to  the  foot  of  the  Rockies. 

Rivers  have  played  the  same  part  in  expediting  Russian 
expansion  across  the  wide  extent  of  Siberia.  Here  again 
a  severe  climate  necessitated  reliance  on  furs,  the  chief  nat- 
ural product  of  the  country,  as  the  basis  of  trade.  These,  as 
the  outcome  of  savage  economy,  were  gathered  in  from  wide 
areas  which  only  rivers  could  open  up.  Therefore,  where 
the  Siberian  streams  flatten  out  their  upper  courses  east  and 
west  against  the  northern  face  of  the  Asiatic  plateau,  with 
low  watersheds  between,  the  Russian  explorer  and  sable 
hunter  struck  their  eastward  water  trail  toward  the  Pacific. 
The  advance,  which  under  Yermak  crossed  the  Ural  Moun- 
tains in  1579,  reached  the  Yenisei  River  in  1610  and  planted 
there  the  town  of  Turuchansk  as  a  sort  of  milestone,  almost 
on  the  Arctic  Circle  opposite  the  mouth  of  the  Lower  Tun- 
guska,  a  long  eastern  tributary.  Up  this  they  passed  to 
the  Lena  in  1627,  thence  to  Bering  Sea  by  the  Kolima  and 
Anadyr  rivers,  because  these  arctic  fields  yielded  sable, 
beaver  and  fox  skins  in  greatest  quantity.14  The  Lena  espe- 
cially, from  its  source  down  to  its  eastern  elbow  at  Yakutsk, 
that  great  rendezvous  of  Siberian  fur  traders,  was  a  high- 
way for  trapper  and  Cossack  tribute-gatherer.15  From  the 
sources  of  the  Yenisei  in  Lake  Baikal  to  the  navigable 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        345 

course  of  the  Amur  was  a  short  step,  taken  in  1658,  though 
the  control  of  the  river,  which  was  claimed  by  China,  was 
not  secured  till  two  hundred  years  later.16  [See  map 
page  103.] 

As  the  only  highways  in  new  countries,  rivers  constitute 
lines  of  least  resistance  for  colonial  peoples  encroaching  upon 
the  territory  of  inferior  races.  They  are  therefore  the  geo- 
graphic basis  of  those  streamers  of  settlement  which  we 
found  making  a  fringe  of  civilization  across  the  boundary 
zone  of  savagery  or  barbarism  on  the  typical  colonial  fron- 
tier. Ethnic  islands  of  the  expanding  people  cluster  along 
them  like  iron  filings  on  a  magnetized  wire.  Therefore  in 
all  countries  where  navigable  rivers  have  fixed  the  lines  of 
expansion,  as  in  the  United  States,  the  northern  part  of  the 
Russian  Empire,  and  the  eastern  or  colonial  border  of  Ger- 
many and  Austria,  there  is  a  strong  anthropo-geographic 
resemblance  in  the  frontiers  of  successive  decades  or  cen- 
turies. But  in  arid  or  semi-arid  regions  like  South  Africa, 
the  western  plains  of  North  America,  the  steppes  of  Russian 
and  Chinese  Turkestan,  the  river  highway  motif  in  expan- 
sion is  lost  in  a  variety  of  other  geographic  and  geologic 
factors,  though  the  water  of  the  streams  still  attracts  trail 
and  settlement. 

A  river  like  the  Nile,  lower  Volga,  Irtysh  or  Indus,  rising  Detenni- 
in  highlands  of  abundant  rainfall  but  traversing  an  arid  or  nants  °f 
desert  land,  acquires  added  importance  because  it  furnishes 
the  sole  means  of  water  travel  and  of  irrigation.     The  Nile  semj.arid 
has  for  ages  constituted  the  main  line  of  intercourse  between  lands, 
the  Mediterranean  and  Equatorial  Africa.     The  Tigris,  Eu- 
phrates, Indus,  and  the  Niger  where  it  makes  its  great  north- 
ern bend  into  the  Sahara  near  Timbuctoo,17  attest  the  value 
to  local  fertility  and  commerce  inherent  in  these  rivers  of 
the    deserts    and    steppes.      Such    rivers    are    always    oasis- 
makers,  whether  on  their  way  to  the  sea  they  periodically 
cover   a   narrow   flood-plain   like    that    of   the   Nile,    or   one 
ninety  miles  wide,  like  that  of  the  Niger's  inland  delta  above 
Timbuctoo ;  18  or  whether  they  emerge  into  a  silent  sea  of 
sand,  like  the  Murghab  of  Russian  Turkestan,  which  spreads 
itself  out  to  water  the  garcfer-s  of  Merv. 


346        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 


Wadi 
routes  in 
arid  lands. 


Even  where  such  rivers  have  a  volume  too  scanty  to  float 
a  raft,  they  yet  point  the  highway,  because  they  alone  sup- 
ply water  for  man  and  beast  across  the  desert  tract.  The 
Oxus  and  Sir  Daria  have  from  time  immemorial  determined 
the  great  trade  routes  through  Turkestan  to  Central  Asia. 
The  Platte,  Arkansas,  Cimarron  and  Canadian  rivers  fixed 
the  course  of  our  early  western  trails  across  the  arid  plains 
to  the  foot  of  the  Rockies;  and  beyond  this  barrier  the 
California  Trail  followed  the  long-drawn  oasis  formed  by 
the  Humboldt  River  across  the  Nevada  Desert,  the  Gila 
River  guided  the  first  American  fur-trapping  explorers 
across  the  burning  deserts  of  Arizona  to  the  Pacific,  and  the 
succession  of  water-holes  in  the  dry  bed  of  the  Mohave  River 
gave  direction  to  the  Spanish  Trail  across  the  Mohave  Des- 
ert towards  Los  Angeles.  In  the  same  way,  Livingstone's 
route  from  the  Orange  River  in  South  Africa  to  Lake 
Ngami,  under  the  direction  of  native  guides,  ran  along  the 
margin  of  the  Kalahari  Desert  up  the  dry  bed  of  the  Mokoko 
River,  which  still  retained  an  irregular  succession  of  per- 
manent wells.19 

In  the  trade-wind  regions  of  the  world,  which  are  char- 
acterized by  seasons  of  intense  drought,  we  find  rivers  car- 
rying a  scant  and  variable  amount  of  water  but  an  abun- 
dance of  gravel  and  sand ;  they  are  known  in  different  local- 
ities as  wadis,  fiumares  and  arroyos.  Their  beds,  dry  for 
long  periods  of  the  year,  become  natural  roads,  paved  with 
the  gravel  which  the  stream  regularly  deposits  in  the  wet 
season.  Local  travel  in  Sicily,  Italy  20  and  other  Mediter- 
ranean countries  uses  such  natural  roads  extensively.  Trade 
routes  across  the  plateau  of  Judea  and  Samaria  follow  the 
wadis,  because  these  give  the  best  gradient  and  the  best  foot- 
ing for  the  ascent.21  Wadis  also  determine  the  line  of  car- 
avan routes  across  the  highlands  of  the  Sahara.  In  the 
desert  of  Southwest  Africa,  the  Khiuseb  is  the  first  river 
north  of  the  Orange  to  reach  the  Atlantic  through  the  bar- 
rier dunes  of  the  coast.  Hence  it  has  drawn  to  its  valley 
the  trade  routes  from  a  wide  circle  of  inland  points  from  Ot- 
tawe  to  Windhoek  and  Rehobeth,  and  given  added  impor- 
tance to  the  British  coast  of  Walfish  Bay,  into  which  it  de- 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        347 

bouches.22  But  just  to  the  north,  the  broad  dry  bed  of  the 
Swakop  offered  a  natural  wagon  route  into  the  interior,  and 
has  been  utilized  for  the  railroad  of  German  Southwest 
Africa. 

The  historical  importance  of  a  river  increases  from  its  Increasing 
source  toward  its  mouth.  Its  head  springs,  gushing  from  historical 
the  ground,  and  the  ramifying  brooks  of  its  highland  course  ""P01 
yield  a  widely  distributed  water  supply  and  thereby  exercise  source  t0 
a  strong  influence  in  locating  the  dwellings  of  men ;  but  they  mouth, 
play  no  part  in  the  great  movements  and  larger  activities 
of  peoples.  Only  when  minor  affluents  unite  to  form  the 
main  stream,  enlarge  it  in  its  lower  course  by  an  increasing 
tribute  of  water,  and  extend  constantly  its  tributary  area, 
does  a  river  assume  real  historical  importance.  It  reaches 
its  fullest  significance  at  its  mouth,  where  it  joins  the  world's 
highway  of  the  ocean.  Here  are  combined  the  best  geo- 
graphical advantages — participation  in  the  cosmopolitan 
civilization  characteristic  of  coastal  regions,  opportunity  for 
inland  and  maritime  commerce,  and  a  fertile  alluvial  soil 
yielding  support  for  dense  populations.  The  predominant 
importance  of  the  debouchment  stretch  of  a  river  is  indicated 
by  the  presence  of  such  cities  as  London,  Rotterdam,  Ham- 
burg, Bremen,  Bordeaux,  Odessa,  Alexandria,  Calcutta, 
Rangoon,  Bangkok,  Hongkong,  Canton,  Nanking  and 
Shanghai,  Montreal  and  Quebec,  New  York,  Philadelphia, 
New  Orleans,  Buenos  Ayres  and  Montevideo.  This  debouch- 
ment stretch  gains  in  practical  value  and  hence  in  perma- 
nent historical  importance  if  it  is  swept  by  a  scouring  tide, 
which  enables  the  junction  of  inland  and  maritime  routes  to 
penetrate  into  the  land.  Even  Strabo  recognized  this  value 
of  tidal  reaches.23  Hence  in  tideless  basins  like  the  Baltic 
and  Caribbean,  the  great  river  ports  have  to  advance  coast- 
ward  to  meet  the  sea ;  and  the  lower  course  of  even  mighty 
streams  like  the  Volga  and  Nile  achieve  a  restricted  im- 
portance.24 

The  control  of  a  river  mouth  becomes  a  desideratum  or 
necessity  to  the  upstream  people.  Otherwise  they  may  be 
bottled  up.  Though  history  shows  us  countless  instances  of 
upstream  expansion,  nevertheless  owing  to  the  ease  of  down- 


348        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 


Location 
at  hydro- 
graphic 
centers. 


stream  navigation  and  this  increasing  historical  importance 
from  source  to  mouth,  the  direction  of  a  river's  flow  has 
often  determined  the  course  of  commerce  and  of  political 
expansion. 

The  possibility  of  radial  expansion,  which  we  have  found 
to  be  the  chief  advantage  of  a  central  location,  is  greatly 
enhanced  if  that  central  location  coincides  wrth  a  hydro- 
graphic  center  of  low  relief.  The  tenth  century  nucleus  of 
the  Russian  Empire  was  found  about  the  low  nodal 
watershed  formed  by  the  Valdai  Hills,  whence  radiated  the 
rivers  later  embodied  in  the  Muscovite  domain.  Here  in 
Novgorod  at  the  head  of  the  Volchov-Ladoga-Neva  system, 
Pskof  on  the  Velikaya,  Tver  at  the  head  of  the  navigable 
Volga,  Moscow  on  the  Oka,  Smolensk  on  the  Dnieper,  and 
Vitebsk  on  the  Duna,  were  gathered  the  Russians  destined 
to  displace  the  primitive  Finnish  population  and  appro- 
priate the  wide  plains  of  eastern  Europe.  Everywhere  their 
conquests,  colonization,  and  commercial  relations  have  fol- 
lowed the  downstream  course  of  their  rivers.  The  Dnieper 
carried  the  Rus  of  Smolensk  and  Kief  to  the  Euxine,  into 
contact  with  the  Byzantine  world,  and  brought  thence  reli- 
gion, art,  and  architecture  for  the  untutored  empire  of  the 
north.  The  influence  of  the  Volga  has  been  irresistible. 
Down  its  current  Novgorod  traders  in  the  twelfth  century 
sought  the  commerce  of  the  Caspian  and  the  Orient;  and 
later  the  Muscovite  princes  pushed  their  conquest  of  the 
Tartar  hordes  from  Asia.  The  Northern  Dwina,  Onega, 
Mesen  and  Petchora  have  carried  long  narrow  bands  of  Slav 
settlement  northward  to  the  Arctic  Ocean.  [See  map 
page  225.]  Medieval  Russian  trade  from  Hanseatic  Pskof 
and  Novgorod,  and  later  Russian  dominion  followed  the 
Narva  and  Neva  to  the  Baltic.  "The  Dnieper  made  Russia 
Byzantine,  the  Volga  made  it  Asiatic.  It  was  for  the  Neva 
to  make  it  European." 

In  the  same  way,  when  the  early  French  explorers  and 
traders  of  Canada  reached  the  hydrographic  center  of 
the  continent  about  Lakes  Superior  and  Michigan,  they 
quickly  crossed  the  low  rim  of  these  basins  southward  to  the 
Mississippi,  and  northward  to  the  Rainy  Lake  and  Winnipeg 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        349 

system  draining  to  Hudson  Bay.28  While  it  took  them  from 
1608  to  1659  and  1662  to  penetrate  upstream  from  Quebec 
to  this  central  watershed,  only  nine  years  elapsed  from 
the  time  (1673)  Marquette  reached  the  westward  flowing 
Wisconsin  River  to  1682,  when  La  Salle  reached  the  mouth 
of  the  Mississippi. 

The  effect  of  mere  current  upon  the  course  of  trade  and  Effect  of 

political  expansion  was  conspicuous  in  the  early  history  of  curren 
f,        ,,....,,  .,  £  .    J  .  upon  trade 

the    Mississippi     Valley,     before     steam     navigation     began  ^^  expan_ 

to  modify  the  geographic  influence  of  a  river's  flow.  sion. 
The  wide  forest-grown  barrier  of  the  Appalachian  Moun- 
tains placed  the  western  pioneers  under  the  geographic 
control  of  the  western  waters.  The  bulkiness  of  their 
field  and  forest  products,  fitted  only  for  water  trans- 
portation, and  the  immense  mass  of  downstream  commerce 
called  loudly  for  a  maritime  outlet  and  the  acquisition  from 
Spain  of  some  port  at  the  Mississippi  mouth.  For  twenty 
years  the  politics  of  this  transmontane  country  centered 
about  the  "Island  of  New  Orleans,"  and  in  1803  saw  its 
dream  realized  by  the  Louisiana  Purchase. 

For  the  western  trader,  the  Mississippi  and  Ohio  were  pre- 
eminently downstream  paths.  Gravity  did  the  work.  Only 
small  boats,  laden  with  fine  commodities  of  small  bulk  and 
large  value,  occasionally  made  the  forty  day  upstream 
voyage  from  New  Orleans  to  Louisville.  Flat  boats  and 
barges  that  were  constructed  at  Pittsburg  for  the  river 
traffic  were  regularly  broken  up  for  lumber  at  downstream 
points  like  Louisville  and  New  Orleans ;  for  the  traders  re- 
turned overland  by  the  old  Chickasaw  Trail  to  the  Cumber- 
land and  Ohio  River  settlements,  carrying  their  profits  in 
the  form  of  gold.  The  same  thing  happens  today,  as  it 
also  happened  two  thousand  years  ago,  on  the  Tigris  and 
Euphrates.  The  highlander  of  Armenia  or  northern  Meso- 
potamia floats  down  the  current  in  his  skin  boat  or  on  his 
brushwood  raft,  to  sell  his  goods  and  the  wood  forming  the 
frame-work  of  his  primitive  craft  in  timberless  Bagdad  and 
Busra,  as  formerly  in  treeless  Babylon.  He  dries  out  his 
skins,  loads  them  on  his  shoulders  or  on  a  mule  brought 
down  for  the  purpose,  and  returns  on  foot  to  his  highland 


350        ANTHROPO  GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 


Importance 
of  mouth 
to  upstream 
people. 


village.27  The  same  preponderance  of  downstream  traffic 
appears  to-day  in  eastern  Siberia.  Pedlers  on  the  Amur 
start  in  the  spring  from  Stretensk,  2025  miles  up  the  river, 
with  their  wares  in  barges,  and  drift  down  with  the  current, 
selling  at  the  villages  en  route,  to  the  river's  mouth  at  Niko- 
laievsk.  Here  they  dispose  of  their  remaining  stock  and  also 
of  their  barges,  the  lumber  of  which  is  utilized  for  side- 
walks, and  they  themselves  return  upstream  by  steamer. 
The  grain  barges  of  western  Siberia,  like  the  coal  barges 
of  the  Mississippi,  even  within  recent  decades,  are  similarly 
disposed  of  at  the  journey's  end.28  The  tonnage  of  down- 
stream traffic  on  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  to-day  greatly  ex- 
ceeds that  upstream.  The  fleet  of  56  coal  boats,  carrying 
about  70,000  tons,  which  the  great  towboat  Sprague  takes 
in  a  single  trip  from  Louisville  down  to  New  Orleans,  all 
return  empty.  Of  the  15,226,805  net  tons  of  freight  shipped 
in  1906  on  the  Ohio  system,  13,980,368  tons  of  coal,  stone, 
sand  and  lumber  were  carried  in  unrigged  craft,  fitted  chiefly 
for  downstream  traffic.29 

Owing  to  the  strong  pull  exerted  by  a  river's  mouth  upon 
all  its  basin,  current,  commerce  and  people  alike  tend  to 
reach  the  ocean.  For  a  nation  holding  the  terrestrial  course 
of  a  stream,  the  political  fate  of  its  tidal  course  or  mouth 
must  always  be  a  matter  of  great  concern.  To  the  early 
westerner  of  the  United  States,  before  the  acquisition  of 
the  Louisiana  country,  it  was  of  vital  importance  whether 
belligerent  France  or  more  amenable  Spain  or  the  Republic 
itself  should  own  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi.  Germany, 
which  holds  240  miles  (400  kilometers)  of  the  navigable 
Danube,30  can  never  be  indifferent  to  the  political  owner- 
ship of  its  mouth,  or  to  the  fact  that  a  great  power  like  Rus- 
sia has  edged  forward,  by  the  acquisition  of  Bessarabia  in 
1878,  to  the  northern  or  Kilia  debouchment  channel.31  Such 
interest  shows  itself  in  sustained  efforts  either  to  gain  political 
control  of  the  mouth,  or  to  secure  the  neutrality  of  the  stream 
by  having  it  declared  an  international  waterway,  and  thus 
partially  to  deprive  the  state  holding  its  mouth  of  the  advan- 
tages of  its  transit  location. 

The  only  satisfactory  solution  is  undivided  political  owner- 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        351 

ship.  After  France  pushed  eastward  to  the  Rhine  in  1648, 
she  warred  for  three  centuries  to  acquire  its  mouth.  Napo- 
leon laid  claim  to  Belgium  and  Holland  on  the  ground  that 
their  soil  had  been  built  up  by  the  alluvium  of  French  rivers. 
Germany's  conquest  of  Schleswig-Holstein  in  1864;  was  sig- 
nificant chiefly  because  it  dislodged  Denmark  from  the  right 
bank  of  the  lower  Elbe,  and  secured  undivided  control  of 
this  important  estuary.  The  Rhine,  which  traverses  the  Em- 
pire from  north  to  south  and  constitutes  its  greatest  single 
trade  route,  gives  to  Germany  a  more  vital  interest  in  Hol- 
land than  ever  France  had.  Her  most  important  iron  and 
coal  mines  and  manufacturing  industries  are  located  on  this 
waterway  or  its  tributaries,  the  Ruhr,  Mosel,  Saar  and  Main. 
Hence  the  Rhine  is  the  great  artery  of  German  trade  and 
outlet  for  her  enormous  exports,  which  chiefly  reach  the  sea 
through  the  ports  of  Belgium  and  Holland.  These  two 
countries  therefore  fatten  on  German  commerce  and  reduce 
German  profits.  Hence  the  Empire,  by  the  construction  of 
the  Emden-Dortmund  canal,  aims  to  divert  its  trade  from 
Rotterdam  and  Antwerp  to  a  German  port,  and  possibly 
thereby  put  the  screw  on  Holland  to  draw  her  into  some 
kind  of  a  commercial  union  with  Germany.32  Heinrich  von 
Treitschke,  in  his  "Politik,"  deplores  the  fact  that  the  most 
valuable  part  of  the  great  German  river  has  fallen  into 
alien  hands,  and  he  declares  it  to  be  an  imperative  task 
of  German  policy  to  recover  the  mouth  of  that  stream, 
"either  by  a  commercial  or  political  union."  "We  need  the 
entrance  of  Holland  into  our  customs  union  as  we  need  our 
daily  bread."  33 

When  the  middle  and  upper  course  of  a  river  system  are  Prevention 
shared  by  several  nations,   their  common  interest  demands  ° 
that  the  control  of  the  mouth  be  divided,  as  in  the  case  of 


the  La  Plata  between  Argentine  and  Uruguay  ;  or  held  by  a  mouth. 
small  state,  like  Holland,  too  weak  to  force  the  monopoly 
of  triie  tidal  course.  The  Treaty  of  Paris  in  1856  extended 
the  territory  of  Moldavia  at  the  cost  of  Russia,  to  keep  the 
Russian  frontier  away  from  the  Danube.34  Her  very  pres- 
ence was  ominous.  The  temptation  to  giant  powers  to 
gobble  up  these  exquisite  morsels  of  territory  is  irresistible. 


352        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 


Motive 
for  canals 
in  lower 
course 


Hence  the  advisability  of  neutralizing  small  states  holding 
such  locations,  as  in  the  case  of  Roumania ;  and  making 
their  rivers  international  waterways,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Orinoco,35  Scheldt,  Waal,  Rhine  and  Danube.36  The  Yang- 
tze Kiang  mouth,  where  already  the  treaty  ports  cluster 
thick,  will  probably  be  the  first  part  of  China  to  be  de- 
clared neutral  ground,  and  as  such  to  be  placed  under  the 
protection  of  the  combined  commercial  powers,37  as  is  even 
now  foreshadowed  by  the  international  Conservancy  Board 
of  1910.38  The  United  States,  by  her  treaty  with  Mexico 
in  1848,  secured  the  right  of  free  navigation  on  the  lower  or 
Mexican  course  of  the  Colorado  River  and  the  Gulf  of  Cali- 
fornia. The  Franco-British  convention,  which  in  1898  con- 
firmed the  western  Sudan  to  France,  also  conceded  the  prin- 
ciple of  making  the  Niger,  the  sole  outlet  of  this  vast  and 
isolated  territory,  an  international  waterway,  and  created 
two  French  enclaves  in  British  Nigeria  to  serve  as  river 
ports.38 

The  mouth  of  a  large  river  system  is  the  converging 
point  of  many  lines  of  inland  and  maritime  navigation.  The 
interests  of  commerce,  especially  in  its  earlier  periods  of 
development,  demand  that  the  contact  here  of  river  and  sea 
be  extensive  as  possible.  Nature  suggests  the  way  to  fulfill 
this  requirement.  The  sluggish  lowland  current  of  a  river, 
on  approaching  sea  level,  throws  out  distributaries  that 
reach  the  coast  at  various  points  and  form  a  network  of 
channels,  which  can  be  deepened  and  rendered  permanent 
by  canalization.  In  such  regions  the  opportunity  for  the 
improvement  and  extension  of  waterways  has  been  utilized 
from  the  earliest  times.  The  ancient  Egyptians,  Chaldeans, 
East  Indians,  and  the  Gauls  of  the  lower  Po  for  thousands 
of  years  canaled  the  waters  of  their  deltas  and  coastal  low- 
lands for  the  combined  purpose  of  irrigation,  drainage,  and 
navigation.  The  great  canal  system  of  China,  constructed 
in  the  seventh  century  primarily  to  facilitate  inland  inter- 
course between  the  northern  and  central  sections  of  the  Em- 
pire, extends  from  the  sea  at  Hangchow  700  miles  northwaru 
through  the  coastal  alluvium  of  the  Yangtze  Kiang,  Hoang- 
ho  and  Pie-ho  to  Tientsin,  the  port  of  Peking.  Only  the 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        353 

canal  system  of  the  center,  important  both  for  the  irriga- 
tion of  the  fertile  but  porous  loess  and  for  the  transporta- 
tion of  crops,  is  still  in  repair.  Here  the  meshes  of  the  canal 
network  are  little  more  than  half  a  mile  wide;  farmers  dig 
canals  to  their  barns  and  bring  in  their  produce  in  barges 
instead  of  hay  wagons.40  Holland,  where  the  ancient  Ro- 
mans constructed  channels  in  the  Rhine  delta  and  where  the 
debouchment  courses  of  the  Rhine,  Meuse  and  Scheldt  pre- 
sent a  labyrinth  of  waterways,  has  to-day  1903  miles 
(3069  kilometers)  of  canals,  which  together  with  the  nav- 
igable rivers,  have  been  important  geographic  factors  in  the 
historical  preeminence  of  Dutch  foreign  commerce.  So  on 
the  lower  Mississippi,  in  the  greatest  alluvial  area  of  the 
United  States,  the  government  has  expended  large  sums  for 
the  improvement  of  the  passes  and  bayous  of  the  river.  The 
Barataria,  Atchafalaya,  Terrebonne,  Black,  Teche  and  La- 
fourche  bayous  have  been  rendered  navigable,  and  New  Or- 
leans has  been  given  canal  outlets  to  the  sea  through  Lakes 
Salvador,  Pontchartrain  and  Borgne. 

As  the  dividing  channels  of  the  lower  course  point  to  the  Watershed 
feasibility  of  amplifying  the  connection  with  the  ocean  canals. 
highway,  so  the  spreading  branches  of  a  river's  source, 
which  approach  other  head  waters  on  a  low  divide,  suggest 
the  extension  of  inland  navigation  by  the  union  of  two  such 
drainage  systems  through  canals.  Where  the  rivers  of  a 
country  radiate  from  a  relatively  low  central  watershed,  as 
from  the  Central  Plateau  of  France  and  the  Valdai  Hills  of 
Russia,  nature  offers  conditions  for  extensive  linking  of  in- 
land waterways.  Hence  we  find  a  continuous  passway 
through  Russia  from  the  Caspian  Sea  to  the  Baltic  by  the 
canal  uniting  the  Volga  and  Neva  rivers ;  another  from  the 
Black  Sea  up  the  Dnieper,  which  by  canals  finds  three  dif- 
ferent outlets  to  the  Baltic  through  the  Vistula,  Niemen 
and  Duna.41  The  Northern  Dwina,  linked,  by  canals,  with  the 
Neva  through  Lakes  Onega  and  Ladoga,  unites  the  White 
Sea  with  the  Baltic.42  Sully,  the  great  minister  of  Henry  IV. 
of  France,  saw  that  the  relief  of  the  country  would  permit 
the  linking  of  the  Loire,  Seine,  Meuse,  Saone  and  Rhine, 
and  the  Mediterranean  with  the  Garonne.  All  his  plans 


354        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 

were  carried  out  by  his  successors,  but  he  himself,  at  the  end 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  began  the  construction  of  the  Briare 
Canal  between  the  Loire  near  Orleans  and  the  Seine  at  Fon- 
tainebleau.43  Similarly  in  the  eastern  half  of  the  United 
States,  the  long,  low  watershed  separating  the  drainage 
basin  of  the  St.  Lawrence  and  Great  Lakes  from  that  of 
the  Mississippi  and  the  Hudson  made  feasible  the  succession 
of  canals  completing  the  "Great  Belt"  of  inland  naviga- 
tion from  St.  Lawrence  and  New  York  bays  to  the  Gulf. 
Albert  Gallatin's  famous  report  of  1808  44  pointed  out  the 
adaptation  of  the  three  low  divides  to  canal  communication; 
but  long  before  this,  every  line  of  possible  canoe  travel  by 
river  and  portage  over  swamp  or  lake-dotted  watershed  had 
been  used  by  savages,  white  explorers  and  French  voyageurs, 
from  Lake  Champlain  to  Lake  Winnebago,  so  that  the 
canal  engineer  had  only  to  select  from  the  numerous  por- 
tage paths  already  beaten  out  by  the  moccasined  feet  of 
Indian  or  fur-trader. 

Rivers  and  The  cheapness  and  ease  of  river  travel  have  tended  to 
railroads.  check  or  delay  the  construction  of  highroads  and  railways, 
where  facilities  for  inland  navigation  have  been  abundant, 
and  later  to  regulate  railway  freight  charges.  Conversely, 
riverless-  lands  have  everywhere  experienced  an  exaggerated 
and  precocious  railroad  development,  and  have  suffered  from 
its  monopoly  of  transportation.  Even  canals  have  in  most 
lands  had  a  far  earlier  date  than  paved  highroads.  This 
has  been  true  of  Spain,  France,  Holland,  and  England.45 
In  the  Hoang-ho  Valley  of  northern  China  where  waterways 
are  restricted,  owing  to  the  rapid  current  and  shallowness 
of  this  river,  highroads  are  comparatively  common;  but  they 
are  very  rare  in  central  and  southern  China  where  navigable 
rivers  and  canals  abound.48  New  England,  owing  to  its 
lack  of  inland  navigation,  was  the  first  part  of  the  United 
States  to  develop  a  complete  system  of  turnpikes  and  later 
of  railroads.  On  the  other  hand,  the  great  river  valleys  of 
America  have  generally  slighted  the  highroad  phase  of  com- 
munication, and  slowly  passed  to  that  of  railroads.  The 
abundance  of  natural  waterways  in  Russia — 51,800  miles  in- 
cluding canals — has  contributed  to  the  retardation  of  railroad 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        355 

construction.47  The  same  thing  is  true  in  the  Netherlands, 
where  4875  miles  (7863  kilometers)  of  navigable  water- 
ways48 in  an  area  of  only  12,870  square  miles  (33,000 
square  kilometers)  have  kept  the  railroads  down  to  a  paltry 
1818  miles  (2931  kilometers)  ;  but  smaller  Belgium,  com- 
manding only  1375  miles  (3314  kilometers)  of  waterway 
and  stimulated  further  by  a  remarkable  industrial  and  com- 
mercial development,  has  constructed  4228  miles  (6819  kilo- 
meters) of  railroad. 

If  we  compare  the  countries  of  Central  and  South  Amer-  Relation 
ica,  where  railroads  are  still  mere  adjuncts  of  river  and  ol 
coastwise  routes,  a  stage  of  development  prevalent  in  the  .  recent 
United  States  till  1858,  we  find  an  unmistakable  relation  colonial 
between  navigable  waterways  and  railroad  mileage.  The  lands, 
countries  with  ample  or  considerable  river  communication, 
like  Brazil,  Venezuela,  Colombia  and  Paraguay,  are  all  rela- 
tively slow  in  laying  railroads  as  compared  with  Mexico  and 
Argentine,  even  when  allowance  is  made  for  differences  of 
zonal  location,  economic  development,  and  degree  of  Eu- 
ropean elements  in  their  respective  populations.  Mexico 
and  Argentine,  having  each  an  area  only  about  one-fourth 
that  of  Brazil  but  a  railroad  mileage  nearly  one-fourth 
greater,  have  been  pushed  to  this  development  primarily  by  a 
common  lack  of  inland  navigation.  Similarly  South  Africa, 
stricken  with  poverty  of  water  communication  south  of  the 
Zambesi,  has  constructed  7500  miles  of  railroads,49  in  spite  of 
the  youth  of  the  country  and  the  sparsity  of  its  white  popula- 
tion. Similar  geographic  conditions  have  forced  the  mileage 
of  Australian  railways  up  to  twice  that  of  South  Africa,  in 
a  country  which  is  still  in  the  pastoral  and  agricultural 
stage  of  development,  and  whose  most  densely  populated 
province  Victoria  has  only  fourteen  inhabitants  to  the 
square  mile.  In  the  almost  unpeopled  wastes  of  Trans-Cas- 
pia,  where  two  decades  ago  the  camel  was  the  only  carrier, 
the  Russian  railroad  has  worked  a  commercial  revolution  by 
stimulating  production  and  affording  an  outlet  for  the  ir- 
rigated districts  of  the  encircling  mountains.50  In  our  own 
Trans-Missouri  country,  where  the  scanty  volume  of  the 
streams  eliminated  all  but  the  Missouri  itself  as  a  dependable 


356        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 


Unity  of 
a  river 
system. 


The  effect 
of  com- 
mon water 
supply  in 
arid  lands. 


waterway,  even  for  the  canoe  travel  of  the  early  western 
trappers,  railroads  have  developed  unchecked  by  the  com- 
petition of  river  transportation.51  With  no  rival  nearer 
than  the  Straits  of  Magellan  and  the  Isthmus  of  Panama  for 
transportation  between  the  Mississippi  and  the  Pacific  coast, 
they  have  fixed  their  own  charges  on  a  monopoly  basis,  and 
have  fought  the  construction  of  the  Isthmian  Canal. 

A  river  system  is  a  system  of  communication.  It  there- 
fore makes  a  bond  of  union  between  the  people  living  among 
its  remoter  sources  and  those  settled  at  its  mouth.  Every 
such  river  system  forms  geographically  an  unbroken  whole. 
Only  where  a  wild,  torrent-filled  gorge,  like  the  Brahma- 
putra's path  through  the  Himalayas,  interrupts  communica- 
tion between  the  upper  and  lower  course,  is  human  life  in 
the  two  sections  divorced.  But  such  cases  are  rare.  Even 
the  River  Jhelam,  which  springs  with  mad  bounds  from  the. 
lofty  Vale  of  Kashmir  through  the  outer  range  of  the  Hima- 
layas down  to  its  junction  with  the  Indus,  carries  quantities 
of  small  logs  to  be  used  as  railway  sleepers ;  and  though  it 
shatters  a  large  per  cent,  of  them,  it  makes  a  link  between 
the  lumber  men  of  the  Kashmir  forests  and  British  railroad 
engineers  in  the  treeless  plains  of  the  Indus.52 

In  arid  lands,  where  the  scant  and  variable  streams  are  use- 
less for  navigation,  but  invaluable  for  irrigation,  a  rival  inter- 
est in  the  limited  water  supply  leads  almost  inevitably  to  con- 
flict, and  often  to  the  political  union  of  the  peoples  holding  the 
upper  and  lower  courses,  in  order  to  secure  adjustment  of 
their  respective  claims.  The  ancient  Salassi  of  the  upper 
Doria  Baltea  Valley  in  the  Alps  drew  off  all  the  water  of  the 
stream  for  washing  gold,  and  thus  deprived  the  agricultural 
people  lower  down  the  valley  of  the  water  necessary  for  irri- 
gation. The  result  was  frequent  wars  between  the  two 
tribes.53  The  offensive  is  taken  by  the  downstream  people, 
whose  fields  and  gardens  suffer  from  every  extension  of  till- 
age or  increase  of  population  in  the  settlements  above  them. 
Occasionally  a  formal  agreement  is  a  temporary  expedient. 
The  River  Firenze  and  other  streams  watering  southern 
Trans-Caspia  have  their  sources  in  the  mountains  of  north- 
ern Persia;  hence  the  Russians,  in  the  boundary  convention 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        357 

with  Persia  of  1881,  stipulated  that  no  new  settlement  be 
established  along  these  streams  within  Persian  territory,  no 
extension  of  land  under  cultivation  beyond  the  present 
amount,  and  no  eduction  of  the  water  beyond  that  neces- 
sary to  irrigate  the  existing  fields.54  Russia's  designs  upon 
Afghanistan  aim  not  only  at  access  to  India,  but  also  at 
the  control  of  the  upper  Murghab  River,  on  whose  water  de- 
pends the  prosperity  of  the  Pendjeh  and  Merv  oases.55  In 
such  regions  the  only  logical  course  is  the  extension  of  the 
political  frontier  to  the  watershed,  a  principle  which  Russia 
is  applying  in  western  Asia,  and  which  California  applied  in 
drawing  her  eastern  boundary  to  include  even  Goose  Lake. 

Rivers  unite.     Ancient  Rome  grew  up  on  both  banks  of  Union  of 
the  Tiber,  and  extended  her  commercial  and  political  suprem-  °PP°site 

acv  up  and  down  stream.     Both  sides  of  the  Rhine  were  ori-  . 

banks. 

ginally  occupied  by  the  Gallic  tribes,  whose  villages  were  in 
some  instances  bisected  by  the  river.  Caesar  found  the 
Menapii,  a  Belgian  people  on  the  lower  Rhine,  with  their 
fields,  farmhouses  and  villages  on  both  banks.56  Then  the 
westward  advance  of  the  Teutonic  tribes  gradually  trans- 
formed the  Rhine  into  a  German  river,  from  the  island  of 
Batavia  at  its  mouth  up  to  the  great  elbow  at  the  foot  of 
the  Jura  Mountains.57  To  the  American  Indians  even  the 
widest  rivers  were  no  barriers.  Christopher  Gist,  exploring 
the  Ohio  in  1751,  found  a  Shawnee  village  situated  on  both 
sides  of  the  river  below  the  mouth  of  the  Scioto,  with  about 
a  hundred  houses  on  the  north  bank  and  forty  on  the  south.58 
The  small  and  unique  nation  of  the  Mandan  Indians  were 
found  by  Lewis  and  Clark  near  the  northern  bend  of  the 
Missouri  in  1804,  in  two  groups  of  villages  on  opposite  sides 
of  the  river.  They  had  previously  in  1772  occupied  nine 
villages  lower  down  the  stream,  two  on  the  east  bank  and 
seven  on  the  west.59  The  Connecticut  River  settlers  of  early 
colonial  days  laid  out  all  their  towns  straight  across  the 
valley,  utilizing  the  alluvial  meadows  on  both  banks  for  till-  Tendency 

age,  the  terraces  for  residence  sites,  and  the  common  river 

ethnic  and 
for  intercourse.60  cultural 

Every  river  tends  to  become  a  common  artery  feeding  all  unity  in  a 
the  life  of  its  basin,  and  gradually  obliterating  ethnic  and  river  valley. 


358        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 


Identity 
of  country 
with  river 
valley. 


cultural  differences  among  the  peoples  of  its  valley.  The 
Nile,  with  its  narrow  hem  of  flood-plain  on  either  bank  and 
barrier  sands  beyond,  has  so  linked  race  and  history  in  Egypt 
and  Nubia,  that  the  two  countries  cannot  be  separated. 
A  common  highway  from  mountains  to  sea,  a  common  fron- 
tier of  trackless  desert  have  developed  here  a  blended  sim- 
ilarity of  race,  language  and  culture  from  the  delta  to  Kordo- 
fan.  The  Hamitic  race  seems  to  have  originated  in  the 
south  and  migrated  northward  down  the  Nile  towards  the 
delta.  Later  the  whole  valley,  north  and  south,  received  the 
same  Semitic  or  Arab  immigration,  which  spread  from  Cairo 
to  the  old  Sudanese  capital  of  Sennar,  while  a  strain  of 
negro  blood  has  filtered  in  from  the  equatorial  black  belt 
and  followed  the  current  down  to  the  sea.61  The  culture  of 
the  valley  originated  in  Lower  Egypt,  and,  with  that  easy 
transmissibility  which  characterizes  ideas,  it  moved  upstream 
into  Ethiopia,  which  never  evolved  a  culture  of  its  own. 
Just  as  noticeable  is  the  political  interplay.  The  rule  of 
the  Pharaohs  extended  far  up  the  Nile,  at  times  to  the  Third 
Cataract  at  20°  N.  L. ;  and  at  one  period  Ethiopian  kings 
extended  their  sway  over  Egypt.  At  another,  a  large  body 
of  mutinous  Egyptian  soldiers  abandoned  their  country  and 
their  wives,  and  emigrated  along  the  one  line  of  slight 
resistance  open  to  them  into  Ethiopia,  to  found  there  a 
new  state  and  new  families  by  marriage  with  native  women, 
thus  contributing  to  the  amalgamation  of  races  in  the 
valley. 

The  most  pronounced  types  of  the  identity  of  a  country 
with  a  river  valley  are  found  where  strongly  marked  geogra- 
phical boundaries,  like  deserts  and  mountains,  emphasize 
the  inner  unity  of  the  basins  by  accentuating  their 
isolation  from  without.  This  is  especially  the  case  in 
high  mountain  regions ;  here  canton  or  commune  or 
county  coincides  with  the  river  valley.  Population  hugs  the 
margins  of  the  streams  where  alone  is  soil  fit  for  cultivation, 
and  fairly  level  land  suitable  for  dwellings.  Above  are  the 
unoccupied  heights,  at  once  barrier  and  boundary.  In  the 
Alps,  Salzburg  is  approximately  identical  with  the  valley 
of  the  Salzach,  Uri  with  that  of  the  Reuss,  the  Valais  with 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        359 

the  upper  Rhone,  the  Engadine  with  the  upper  Inn,  Glarus 
with  the  Linth,  Graubunden  or  Grisons  with  the  upper 
Rhine,  Valtellina  with  the  Adda.  So  in  the  great  upheaved 
area  of  the  Himalayas,  the  state  of  Kashmir  was  originally 
the  valley  of  the  upper  Jhelam  River,  while  Assam,  in  its 
correct  delimitation,  is  the  valley  of  the  Brahmaputra  be- 
tween the  Himalayan  gorge  and  the  swamps  of  Bengal.62 

In  mountain  regions  which  are  also  arid,  the  identity  of  a 
district  with  a  stream  basin  becomes  yet  more  pronounced, 
because  here  population  must  gather  about  the  common 
water  supply,  must  organize  to  secure  its  fair  distribution, 
and  cooperate  in  the  construction  of  irrigation  channels  to 
make  the  distribution  as  economical  and  effective  as  possible. 
Thus  in  Chinese  Turkestan,  the  districts  of  Yarkand,  Kash- 
gar,  Aksu  and  Kut-sha  are  identical  with  as  many  mountain 
tributaries  of  the  Tarim,  whose  basin  in  turn  comprises  al- 
most the  whole  of  Chinese  Turkestan. 

In  all  such  desert  and  mountain-rimmed  valleys,  the  cen-  Enclosed 
tral  stream  attracts  to  its  narrow  hem  of  alluvial  soil  the  nver 
majority  of  the  population,  determines  the  course  of  the 
main  highroad,  and  is  itself  often  the  only  route  through 
the  encompassing  barriers.  Hence  the  importance  attached  to 
the  river  by  the  inhabitants,  an  importance  reflected  in  the 
fact  that  the  river  often  gives  its  name  to  the  whole  district. 
To  the  most  ancient  Greeks  Aiglptos  meant  the  river,  whose 
name  was  later  transferred  to  the  whole  land ;  for  the  narrow 
arable  strip  which  constituted  Egypt  was  "the  gift  of  the 
Nile."  The  Aryans,  descending  into  India  through  the 
mountains  on  its  northwest  border,  gave  the  name  of  Sindhu, 
"the  flood"  or  "the  ocean,"  to  the  first  great  river  they  met. 
In  the  mouth  of  Persians  and  Greeks  the  name  was  corrupted 
into  Indus,  and  then  applied  to  the  whole  country;  but  it 
still  survives  in  its  original  form  in  the  local  designation  of 
the  Sind  province,  which  comprises  the  valley  of  the  Indus 
below  the  confluence  of  the  five  rivers,  which  again  formed 
and  named  the  original  Punjab.  Significantly  enough  the 
western  political  boundary  of  the  Sind  extends  into  the 
barren  foothills  of  Baluchistan  only  so  far  as  the  affluents 
of  the  Indus  render  the  land  arable  by  irrigation ;  for  the 


360        AXTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 

Indus  performs  for  the  great  province  of  the  Sind,  by 
annual  inundation  and  perennial  irrigation,  the  same  service 
that  the  Nile  does  for  Egypt. 

The  segregation  of  such  districts,  and  the  concentration 
of  their  interests  and  activities  along  the  central  streams 
have  tended  to  develop  in  the  population  an  intense  but  con- 
tracted national  consciousness,  and  to  lend  them  a  distinctive 
history.  Their  rivers  become  interwoven  with  their  mythol- 
ogy and  religion,  are  gods  to  be  worshipped  or  appeased, 
become  goals  of  pilgrimages,  or  acquire  a  peculiar  sanc- 
tity. The  Nile,  Ganges,  Jamna,  Jordan,  Tiber  and  Po  are 
such  sacred  streams,  while  the  Rhine  figures  in  German 
mythology. 
Rivers  as  From  the  uniting  power  of  rivers  it  follows  that  they  are 

unoanes      pOor  boundaries.     Only  mountains  and  seas  divide  sharply 

of  races  .     /.  £      , 

and  peonies.  cnouSn  ^°  f°rm  scientific  frontiers.  Kivers  may  serve  as 
political  lines  of  demarcation  and  therefore  fix  political 
frontiers ;  but  they  can  never  take  the  place  of  natural  boun- 
daries. A  migrating  or  expanding  people  tend  always  to 
occupy  both  slopes  of  a  river  valley.  They  run  their  boun- 
dary of  race  or  language  across  the  axis  of  their  river  basin, 
only  under  exceptional  circumstances  along  the  stream  itself. 
The  English-French  boundary  in  the  St.  Lawrence  Valley 
crosses  the  river  in  a  broad  transitional  zone  of  mingled 
people  and  speech  in  and  above  the  city  of  Montreal.  The 
French-German  linguistic  frontier  in  Switzerland  crosses  the 
upper  Rhone  Valley  just  above  Sierre,  but  the  whole  canton 
of  Valais  above  the  elbow  of  the  river  at  Martigny  shows 
fundamental  ethnic  unity,  indicated  by  identity  of  head  form, 
stature  and  coloring.83  Where  the  Elbe  flows  through  the 
low  plains  of  North  Germany,  its  whole  broad  valley  is  oc- 
cupied by  a  pure  Teutonic  population — fair,  tall,  long- 
headed; a  more  brunette  type  occupies  its  middle  course 
across  the  uplands  of  Saxony,  and  speaks  German  like 
the  downstream  folk;  but  its  upper  course,  hemmed  in 
by  the  Erz  and  Riesen  Mountains,  shows  the  short,  dark 
and  broad-headed  people  of  the  Bohemian  basin,  speaking 
the  Czech  language.64  On  the  Danube,  too,  the  same  thing 
is  true.  The  upper  stream  is  German  in  language  and  prc- 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        361 

dominantly  Alpine  in  race  stock  down  to  the  Austro-Hun- 
garian  boundary;  from  this  point  to  the  Drave  mouth  it  is 
Hungarian ;  and  from  the  Drave  to  the  Iron  Gate  it  is  Serbo- 
Croatian  on  both  banks.60  Lines  of  ethnic  demarcation, 
therefore,  cut  the  Elbe  and  Danube  transversely,  not  longi- 
tudinally. [See  map  page  223.] 

The  statements  of  Caesar  and  Pliny  that  the  Seine  and 
Marne  formed  the  boundary  between  the  Gauls  and  Belgians, 
and  the  Garonne  that  between  the  Gauls  and  Aquitanians, 
must  be  accepted  merely  as  general  and  preliminary ;  for  ex- 
ceptions are  noted  later  in  the  text.  Parisii,  for  instance, 
were  represented  as  holding  both  banks  of  the  Seine  and 
Marne  at  their  confluence,  and  the  Gallic  Bituriges  were  found 
on  the  Aquitanian  side  of  the  Garonne  estuary. 

Only  under  peculiar  conditions  do  rivers  become  effective  Scientific 
as  ethnic,  tribal  or  political  boundaries.  Most  often  it  is  "ver 
some  physiographic  feature  which  makes  the  stream  an  ob-  oun 
stacle  to  communication,  and  lends  it  the  character  of  a 
scientific  boundary.  The  division  of  the  Alpine  foreland  of 
southern  Germany  first  into  tribal  and  later  into  political 
provinces  by  the  Iller,  Lech,  Inn,  and  Salzach  can  be  as- 
cribed in  part  to  the  tumultuous  course  of  these  streams  from 
the  mountains  to  the  Danube,  wrhich  renders  them  useless 
for  communication.66  The  lower  Danube  forms  a  well  main- 
tained linguistic  boundary  between  the  Bulgarians  and  Rou- 
manians, except  in  the  northwest  corner  of  Bulgaria,  where 
the  hill  country  between  the  Timok  River  and  the  Danube 
has  enticed  a  small  group  of  Roumanians  across  to  the  south- 
ern side.  From  this  point  down  the  stream,  a  long  stretch  of 
low  marshy  bank  on  the  northern  side,  offering  village  sites 
only  at  the  few  places  where  the  loess  terrace  of  Roumania 
comes  close  to  the  river,  exposed  to  overflows,  strewn  with 
swamps  and  lakes,  and  generally  unfit  for  settlement,  has 
made  the  Danube  an  effective  barrier.67  Similarly,  the 
broad,  sluggish  Shannon  River,  which  spreads  out  to  lake 
breadth  at  close  intervals  in  its  course  across  the  boggy 
central  plain  of  Ireland,  has  from  the  earliest  times  proved 
a  sufficient  barrier  to  divide  the  plain  into  two  portions, 
Connaught  and  Meath,68  contrasted  in  history,  in  speech  and 


362        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 


Rivers  aa 

political 

boundaries. 


to  some  extent  even  in  race  elements.89  A  different  cause 
gave  the  Thames  its  unique  role  among  the  larger  English 
rivers  as  a  boundary  between  counties  from  source  to  mouth. 
London's  fortified  position  at  the  head  of  the  Thames  estuary 
closed  this  stream  as  a  line  of  invasion  to  the  early  Saxons, 
and  forced  them  to  make  detours  to  the  north  and  south  of 
the  river,  which  therefore  became  a  tribal  boundary.70 

Where  navigation  is  peculiarly  backward,  a  river  may 
present  a  barrier.  An  instructive  instance  is  afforded  by  the 
River  Yo,  which  flows  eastward  through  northern  Bornu 
into  Lake  Chad,  and  serves  at  once  as  boundary  and  pro- 
tection to  the  agricultural  tribes  of  the  Kanuri  against  the 
depredations  of  the  Tibbu  robbers  living  in  the  Sahara  or 
the  northern  grassland.  But  during  the  dry  season  from 
April  to  August,  when  the  trickling  stream  is  sucked  up 
by  the  thirsty  land  and  thirstier  air,  the  Tibbu  horsemen 
sweep  down  on  the  unprotected  Kanuri  and  retreat  with 
their  booty  across  the  vanished  barrier.  The  primitive  navi- 
gation by  reed  or  brushwood  rafts,  practiced  in  this  almost 
streamless  district,  affords  no  means  of  retreat  for  mounted 
robbers ;  so  the  raiding  season  opens  with  the  fall  of  the 
river.71 

For  political  boundaries,  which  are  often  adopted  with 
little  reference  to  race  distribution,  rivers  serve  fairly  well. 
They  are  convenient  lines  of  demarcation  and  strategic  lines 
of  defense,  as  is  proved  by  the  military  history  of  the  Rhine, 
Danube,  Ebro,  Po,  and  countless  other  streams.  On  the 
lower  Zambesi  Livingstone  found  the  territories  of  the  lesser 
chiefs  defined  by  the  rivulets  draining  into  the  main  river. 
The  leader  of  the  Makololo  formally  adopted  the  Zam- 
besi as  his  political  and  military  frontier,  though  his  people 
spread  and  settled  beyond  the  river.72  Long  established 
political  frontiers  may  become  ethnic  boundaries,  more  or 
less  distinct,  because  of  protracted  political  exclusion.  To 
the  Romans,  the  Danube  and  Rhine  as  a  northeastern  fron- 
tier had  the  value  chiefly  of  established  lines  in  an  imper- 
fectly explored  wilderness,  and  of  strategic  positions  for  the 
defense  of  an  oft  assailed  border;  but  the  long  maintenance 
of  this  political  frontier  resulted  in  the  partial  segregation 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        363 

and  hence  differentiation  of  the  people  dwelling  on  the  op- 
posite banks. 

Poor  as  a  scientific  boundary,  a  river  is  not  satisfactory 
even  as  a  line  of  demarcation,  because  of  its  tendency  to 
shift  its  bed  in  every  level  stretch  of  its  course.  A  political 
boundary  that  follows  a  river,  therefore,  is  often  doomed  to 
frequent  surveys.  The  plantations  on  the  meanders  of  the 
lower  Mississippi  are  connected  now  with  one,  now  with  the 
other  of  the  contiguous  states,  as  the  great  stream  straight- 
ens its  course  after  the  almost  annual  overflow.73  The  Rio 
Grande  has  proved  a  troublesome  and  expensive  boundary 
between  the  United  States  and  Mexico.  Almost  every  rise 
sees  it  cutting  a  new  channel  for  itself,  now  through  Texas, 
now  through  Mexican  territory,  occasioning  endless  contro- 
versies as  to  the  ownership  of  the  detached  land,  and  de- 
manding fresh  surveys.  Recent  changes  in  the  lower  course 
of  the  Helmund  between  Nasralabad  and  the  Sistan  Swamp, 
which  was  adopted  in  1872  as  the  boundary  between  Afghan- 
istan and  Persia,  have  necessitated  a  new  demarcation  of  the 
frontier;  and  on  this  task  a  commission  is  at  present  en- 
gaged.74 In  a  like  manner  Strabo  tells  us  that  the  River 
Achelous,  forming  the  boundary  between  ancient  Acarnania 
and  Aetolia  in  western  Hellas,  by  overflowing  its  delta  re- 
gion, constantly  obliterated  the  boundaries  agreed  upon  by 
the  two  neighbors,  and  thereby  gave  rise  to  disputes  that 
were  only  settled  by  force  of  arms.75 

Rivers  tend  always  to  be  centers  of  population,  not  out-  Fluvial 
skirts  or  perimeters.     They  offer  advantages  that  have  al-  settlements 
ways    attracted    settlement — fertile    alluvial    soil,    a   nearby  an    P*0^ es' 
water   supply,   command   of   a   natural  highway    for   inter- 
course with  neighbors  and  access  to  markets.    Among  civilized 
peoples   fluvial   settlements   have   been   the   nuclei   of   broad 
states,  passing  rapidly  through  an  embryonic  development 
to  a  maturity  in  which  the  old  center  can  still  be  distin- 
guished by  a  greater  density  of  population.     Only  among 
savages    or    among   civilized   people   who   have   temporarily 
reverted  to  primitive  conditions  in  virgin  colonial  lands,  do 
we  find  genuine  riverine  folk,  whose  existence  is  closely  re- 
stricted to  their  bordering  streams.     The  river  tribes  of  the 


364        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 


Riparian 
villages 
of  French 
Canada. 


Congo  occupy  the  banks  or  the  larger  islands,  while  the 
land  only  three  or  four  miles  back  from  the  stream  is  held 
by  different  tribes  with  whom  the  riverine  people  trade  their 
fish.  The  latter  are  expert  fishermen  and  navigators,  and 
good  agriculturists,  raising  a  variety  of  fruits  and  veget- 
ables. On  the  river  banks  at  regular  intervals  are  market 
greens,  neutral  ground,  whither  people  come  from  up  and 
down  stream  and  from  the  interior  to  trade.  Their  long  rip- 
arian villages  consist  of  a  single  street,  thirty  feet  wide  and 
often  two  miles  long,  on  which  face  perhaps  three  hundred 
long  houses.76  Fisher  and  canoe  people  line  the  Welle,  the 
great  northern  tributary  of  the  Congo.77  The  same  type 
appeared  in  South  America  in  the  aboriginal  Caribs  and 
Tupis  dwelling  along  the  southern  tributaries  of  the  Ama- 
zon and  the  affluents  of  the  Paraguay.  These  were  distinct- 
ly a  water  race,  having  achieved  a  meager  development  only 
in  navigation,  fishing  and  the  cultivation  of  their  alluvial 
soil.78  The  ancient  mound-builders  of  America  located  their 
villages  chiefly,  though  not  exclusively,  along  the  principal 
watercourses,  like  the  Mississippi,  Illinois,  Miami,  Wabash, 
Wisconsin,  and  Fox,79  on  the  very  streams  later  dotted  by 
the  trading  posts  of  the  French  voyageurs. 

The  presence  of  the  great  waterways  of  Canada  and  the 
demand  of  the  fur  trade  for  extensive  and  easy  communica- 
tion made  the  early  French  colonists  as  distinctly  a  riverine 
people  as  the  savage  Congo  tribes.  Like  these,  they 
stretched  out  their  villages  in  a  single  line  of  cabins  and 
clearings,  three  or  four  miles  long,  facing  the  river,  which 
was  the  King's  highway.  Such  a  village  was  called  a  cote. 
One  cote  ran  into  the  next,  for  their  expansion  was  always 
longitudinal,  never  lateral.  These  riparian  settlements 
lined  the  main  watercourses  of  French  Canada,  especially 
the  St.  Lawrence,  whose  shores  from  Beaupre,  fifteen  miles  be- 
low Quebec,  up  to  Montreal  at  an  early  date  presented  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  single  street.  Along  the  river  passed  the 
stately  trading  ship  from  France  with  its  cargo  of  wives  and 
merchandise  for  the  colonists,  the  pirogue  of  the  habitant 
farmer  carrying  his  onions  and  grain  to  the  Quebec  market, 
the  birchbark  canoe  of  the  adventurous  voyageur  bringing 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS         365 


THE  KIPARIAN  VILLAGES  OF  THE  LOWER  ST.  LAWRENCE. 


366        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 


Boatman 
tribes  or 
castes. 


down  his  winter's  hunt  of  furs  from  the  snow-bound  forests 
of  the  interior,  and  the  fleet  of  Jesuit  priests  bound  to  some 
remote  inland  mission. 

On  this  water  thoroughfare  every  dwelling  faced.  Hence 
land  on  the  river  was  at  a  premium,  while  that  two  miles 
back  was  to  be  had  for  the  taking.  The  original  grants 
measured  generally  766  feet  in  width  and  7,660  in  depth  in- 
land; but  when  bequeathed  from  generation  to  generation, 
they  were  divided  up  along  lines  running  back  at  right 
angles  to  the  all  important  waterway.  Hence  each  habitant 
farm  measured  its  precious  river-front  by  the  foot  and  its 
depth  by  the  mile,  while  the  cabins  were  ranged  side  by  side 
in  cosy  neighborliness.  The  cote*  iype  of  village,  though 
eminently  convenient  for  the  Indian  trade,  was  ill  adapted 
for  government  and  defense  against  the  savages ;  but  the 
need  for  the  communication  supplied  by  the  river  was  so  funda- 
mental, that  it  nullified  all  efforts  of  the  authorities  to  con- 
centrate the  colonists  in  more  compact  settlements.  Park- 
man  says :  "One  could  have  seen  almost  every  house  in 
Canada  by  paddling  a  canoe  up  the  St.  Lawrence  and  Riche- 
lieu." The  same  type  of  land-holding  can  be  traced  to- 
day on  the  Chaudiere  River,  where  the  fences  run  back  from 
the  stream  like  the  teeth  of  a  comb.  It  is  reproduced  on  a 
larger  scale  in  the  long,  narrow  counties  ranged  along  the 
lower  St.  Lawrence,  whose  shape  points  to  the  old  fluvial 
nuclei  of  settlement.  Similarly  the  early  Dutch  grants  on 
the  Hudson  gave  to  the  patroons  four  miles  along  the  river 
and  an  indefinite  extension  back  from  the  stream.  In  the 
early  Connecticut  River  settlements,  the  same  consideration 
of  a  share  in  the  river  and  its  alluvial  bottoms  distributed 
the  town  lots  among  the  inhabitants  in  long  narrow  strips 
running  back  from  the  banks.81 

In  undeveloped  countries,  where  rivers  are  the  chief  high- 
ways, we  occasionally  see  the  survival  of  a  distinct  race  of 
boatmen  amid  an  intruding  people  of  different  stock,  pre- 
served in  their  purity  by  their  peculiar  occupation,  which  has 
given  them  the  aloofness  of  a  caste.  In  the  Kwang-tung 
province  of  southern  China  are  40,000  Tanka  boat  people, 
who  live  in  boats  and  pile-dwellings  in  the  Canton  River. 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        367 

The  Chinese,  from  whom  they  are  quite  distinct,  regard  them 
as  a  remnant  of  the  original  population,  which  was  dis- 
lodged by  their  invasion  and  forced  to  take  refuge  on  the 
water.  They  gradually  established  intercourse  with  the  con- 
querors of  the  land,  but  held  themselves  aloof.  They  marry 
only  among  themselves,  have  their  own  customs,  and  enjoy 
a  practical  monopoly  of  carrying  passengers  and  messages 
between  the  steamers  and  the  shore  at  Macao,  Hongkong 
and  Canton.82  In  the  same  way,  the  middle  Niger  above 
Gao  possesses  a  distinct  aquatic  people,  the  Somnos  or  Bosos, 
who  earn  their  living  as  fishermen  and  boatmen  on  the  river. 
They  spread  their  villages  along  the  Niger  and  its  tribu- 
taries, and  occupy  separate  quarters  in  the  large  towns  like 
Gao  and  Timbuctoo.  They  are  creatures  of  the  river  rather 
than  of  the  land,  and  show  great  skill  and  endurance  in 
paddling  and  poling  their  narrow  dugouts  on  their  long 
Niger  voyages.83 

Reference  has  been  made  before  to  the  large  river  popu- 
lation of  China  who  live  on  boats  and  rafts,  and  forward 
the  trade  of  the  vast  inland  waterways.  These  are  people, 
differentiated  not  in  race,  but  in  occupation  and  mode  of 
life,  constantly  recruited  from  the  congested  population  of 
the  land.  Allied  to  them  are  the  trackers  or  towing  crews 
whose  villages  form  a  distinctive  feature  of  the  turbulent 
upper  Yangtze,  and  who  are  employed,  sometimes  three 
hundred  at  a  time,  to  drag  junks  up  the  succession  of  rapids 
above  Ichang.84  Similarly  the  complex  of  navigable  water- 
ways centering  about  Paris,  as  far  back  as  the  reign  of 
Tiberius  Caesar,  gave  rise  to  the  Nautae  Parisii  or  guild  of 
mariners,  from  whom  the  city  of  Paris  derived  its  present 
coat  of  arms — a  vessel  under  full  sail.  These  Lutetian  boat- 
men handled  the  river  traffic  in  all  the  territory  drained  by 
the  Seine,  Marne,  and  Oise.  Later,  in  the  reign  of  Louis  the 
Fat,  they  were  succeeded  by  the  Mercatores  aquae  Parisiaci, 
and  from  them  sprang  the  municipal  body  appointed  to 
regulate  the  river  navigation  and  commerce.85 

The  location  of  the  ancient  tribe  of  the  Parisii  is  typi-  ,     , 
cal  of  many  other  weak  riverine  folk  who  seek  in  the  is-  protected 
lands  of  a  river  a  protected  position  to  compensate  for  their  sites. 


368        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 

paucity  of  number.  The  Parisii,  one  of  the  smallest  of  the 
Gallic  tribes,  ill-matched  against  their  populous  neighbors, 
took  refuge  on  ten  islands  and  sandbars  of  the  Seine  and 
there  established  themselves.86  Stanley  found  an  island  in 
"the  Congo  near  the  second  cataract  of  Stanley  Falls  occu- 
pied by  five  villages  of  the  Baswa,  who  had  taken  refuge 
there  from  the  attacks  of  the  bloodthirsty  Bakuma.87  Dur- 
ing the  Tartar  invasions  of  Russia  in  the  thirteenth  and  four- 
teenth centuries,  bands  of  refugees  from  the  surrounding 
country  gathered  for  mutual  defense  on  the  islands  of  the 
Dnieper  River,  and  became  the  nucleus  of  the  Dnieper  Cos- 
sacks.88 The  Huron  tribe  of  American  Indians,  reduced  to 
a  mere  fragment  by  repeated  Iroquois  attacks,  fled  first  to 
the  islands  of  St.  Joseph  and  Michilimackinac  in  Lake  Hu- 
•  ron,  and  in  1656  to  the  Isle  of  Orleans  in  the  St.  Lawrence. 
But  even  this  location  under  the  guns  of  their  French  allies 
in  Quebec  failed  to  protect  them,  for  the  St.  Lawrence  was 
a  highway  for  the  war  fleets  of  their  implacable  foe.89 
River  and  A  river  island  not  only  confers  the  negative  benefit  of 

lake  is-          protection,    but   affords    a    coign    of    vantage    for    raids    on 
^^  *•         the  surrounding  country,  being  to  some  extent  proof  against 

ei>t.  u       punitive   attacks.      It   offers    special    facilities    for    depreda- 
strongholds.       . 

tions  on  parties  crossing  the  river;  here  the  divided  current, 

losing  something  of  its  force,  is  less  of  an  obstacle,  and  the 
island  serves  as  a  resting  place  on  the  passage.  Immunity 
from  punishment  breeds  lawlessness.  The  Ba  Toka  who, 
fifty  years  ago,  inhabited  the  islands  in  the  great  southern 
bend  of  the  Zambesi,  utilized  their  location  to  lure  wander- 
ing tribes  on  to  their  islands,  under  the  pretext  of  ferry- 
ing them  across,  and  then  to  rob  them,  till  Sebituane,  the 
great  Makololo  chief,  cleaned  out  their  fastnesses  and  opened 
the  river  for  trade.90  The  islands  in  the  wide  stretches  of 
the  Lualaba  River  in  the  Babemba  country  were  described 
to  Livingstone  as  harboring  a  population  of  marauders  and 
robbers,  who  felt  themselves  safe  from  attack.91  The  same 
unenviable  reputation  attaches  to  the  Budumas  of  the  Lake 
Chad  islands.  A  weak,  timid,  displaced  people,  they  never- 
theless lose  no  chance  of  raiding  the  herds  of  the  Sudanese 
tribes  inhabiting  the  shores  of  the  Lake,  and  carrying  off 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        369 

the  stolen  cattle  on  their  wretched  rafts  to  their  island 
retreats.92 

The  protection  of  an  island  location  is   almost  equalled  River  pen- 
in  the  peninsulas  formed  by  the  serpentines  or  meanders  of  insulas  as 

a  river.     Hence  these  are  choice  sites  for  fortress  or  settle-  Pro  ec 

sires 

ment  in  primitive  communities,  where  hostilities  are  always 
imminent  and  rivers  the  sole  means  of  communication.  The 
defensive  works  of  the  mound-builders  in  great  numbers 
occupied  such  river  peninsulas.  The  neck  of  the  loop  was 
fortified  by  a  single  or  double  line  of  ditch  and  earthen  wall, 
constructed  from  bank  to  bank  of  the  encircling  stream.93 
This  was  exactly  the  location  of  Vesontio,  now  Besan9on, 
once  the  ancient  stronghold  of  the  Sequani  in  eastern  Gaul. 
It  was  situated  in  a  loop  of  the  Dubis,  so  nearly  a  circle 
that  its  course  seems  to  have  been  "described  by  a  compass," 
Caesar  says,  while  fortifications  across  the  isthmus  made  the 
position  of  the  town  almost  impregnable.94  Verona,  lying  at 
the  exit  of  the  great  martial  highway  of  the  Brenner  Pass,  oc- 
cupies just  such  a  loop  of  the  Adige,  as  does  Capea  on  the 
Volturno,  and  Berne  on  the  Aare.  Shrewsbury,  in  the 
Middle  Ages  an  important  military  point  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  order  on  the  marches  of  Wales,  is  almost  encircled 
by  the  River  Severn,  while  a  castle  on  the  neck  of  the  penin- 
sula completes  the  defense  on  the  land  side.95  Graaf  Rein,- 
ett,  at  one  time  an  exposed  frontier  settlement  of  the  Dutch 
in  Cape  Colony,  had  a  natural  moat  around  it  in  the  Sun- 
day River,  which  here  describes  three-fourths  of  a  circle. 

The    need    of    protection    felt    by    all    colonists    in    new  River  is- 
countries  amid  savage  or  barbarous  people  whom  encroach-  lands  as 
ment  sooner  or  later  makes  hostile,  leads   them  if  possible  sites.  of 
to  place  their  first  trading  posts  and  settlements  on  river       .    ~, 
islands,   especially    at  the   mouth   of   the   streams,   where    a  colonies, 
delta  often  affords  the  site  required,  and  where  the  junc- 
tion  of  ocean   and  river  highway   offers   the  best  facilities 
for  trade.     A  river  island  fixed  the  location  of  the  English 
settlement  at  Jamestown  in  Virginia,  the  French  at  Mon- 
treal and  New  Orleans,  the  Dutch  at  Manhattan  and  Van 
Renssellaer   Island  in   the   Hudson,   the  Swedes   at   Tinicum 
Island  in  the  Delaware  River  a  few  miles  below  the  mouth 


370        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 


Swamps  as 
barriers  and 
boundaries. 


Swamps  as 
regions  of 

survival. 


of  the  Schuylkill.96  St.  Louis,  located  on  a  delta  island  of 
the  Senegal  River,  is  one  of  the  oldest  European  towns  in 
West  Africa;87  and  Bathurst,  founded  in  1618  on  a  similar 
site  at  the  mouth  of  the  Gambia,  has  for  centuries  now  been 
the  safe  outlet  for  the  trade  of  this  stream.08  Such  island 
settlements  at  river  mouths  are  a  phenomenon  of  the  outer 
edge  of  every  coastal  region ;  but  inland  stations  for  trade  or 
military  control  also  seek  the  protection  of  an  island  site. 
The  Russians  in  the  seventeenth  century  secured  their  down- 
stream conquest  of  the  Amur  by  a  succession  of  river  island 
forts,"  which  recall  Colonel  Byrd's  early  frontier  post  on 
an  island  in  the  Holston  River,  and  George  Rogers  Clark's 
military  stockade  on  Corn  Island  in  the  Ohio,  which  became 
the  nucleus  of  the  later  city  of  Louisville. 

More  effective  than  rivers  in  the  protection  which  they 
afford  are  swamps.  Neither  solid  land  nor  navigable  water, 
their  sluggish,  passive  surface  raises  an  obstacle  of  pure 
inertia  to  the  movements  of  mankind.  Hence  they  form  one 
of  those  natural  boundaries  that  segregate.  In  southern 
England,  Romney  Marsh,  reinforced  by  the  Wealden  Forest, 
fixed  the  western  boundary  of  the  ancient  Saxon  kingdom  of 
Kent  by  blocking  expansion  in  that  direction,  just  as  the 
bordering  swamps  of  the  Lea  and  Colne  rivers  formed  the 
eastern  and  western  boundaries  of  Middlesex.100  The  Fen- 
land  of  the  Wash,  which  extended  in  Saxon  days  from  the 
highland  about  Lincoln  south  to  Cambridge  and  Newmarket, 
served  to  hem  in  the  Angles  of  Norfolk  and  Suffolk  on  the 
west,  so  that  the  occupation  of  the  interior  was  left  to  later 
bands  who  entered  by  the  estuaries  of  the  Humber  and 
Forth.101  In  northern  Germany,  the  low  cross  valleys  of 
the  Spree,  Havel  and  Netze  rivers,  bordered  by  alder 
swamps,  were  long  a  serious  obstacle  to  communication, 
and  therefore  became  boundaries  of  districts,102  just  as  the 
Bourtanger  Moor  drew  the  dividing  line  between  Holland 
and  Hanover. 

Swamp-bordered  regions,  as  areas  of  natural  isolation, 
guard  and  keep  intact  the  people  which  they  hold.  There- 
fore they  are  regions  of  survival  of  race  and  language.  The 
scattered  islets  of  the  Fens  of  England  furnished  an  asylum 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        371 

to  the  early  British  Celts  from  Teutonic  attacks,103  and 
later  protected  them  against  dominant  infusion  of  Teutonic 
blood.  Hence  to-day  in  the  Fenland  and  in  the  district  just 
to  the  south  we  find  a  darker,  shorter  people  than  in  the 
country  to  the  east  or  west.10'  Similarly  the  White  Russians, 
occupying  the  poor,  marshy  region  of  uncertain  watershed 
between  the  sources  of  the  Duna,  Dnieper  and  Volga,  have 
the  purest  blood  of  all  the  eastern  Slavs,  though  this  dis- 
tinction is  coupled  with  poverty  and  retarded  culture,105  a 
combination  that  anthropo-geography  often  reveals.  Wholly 
distinct  from  the  Russians  and  segregated  from  them  by  a 
barrier  of  swampy  forests,  we  find  the  Letto-Lithuanians 
in  the  Baltic  province  of  Courland,  speaking  the  most  primi- 
tive form  of  flcctional  languages  classed  as  Aryan.  The 
isolation  which  preserved  their  archaic  speech,  of  all  Euro- 
pean tongues  the  nearest  to  the  Sanskrit,  made  them  the  last 
European  people  to  accept  Christianity.10*  The  great  race 
of  the  Slavic  Wends,  who  once  occupied  all  northern  Germany 
between  the  Vistula  and  Elbe,  has  left  only  a  small  and  de- 
clining remnant  of  its  language  in  the  swampy  forests  about 
the  sources  of  the  Spree.107  [See  ethnographical  map,  p.  223.] 
The  band  of  marshlands  stretching  through  Holland  from 
the  shallow  Zuyder  Zee  east  to  the  German  frontier,  has 
given  to  Friesland  and  the  coast  islands  of  Holland  a  peculiar 
isolation,  which  has  favored  the  development  and  survival 
of  the  peculiar  Friesian  dialect,  that  speech  so  nearly  allied 
to  Saxon  English,  and  has  preserved  here  the  purest  type 
of  the  tall,  blond  Teuton  among  the  otherwise  mixed  stock 
of  the  Netherlands.108 

Inaccessible  to  all  except  those  familiar  with  their  treacher-  Swamps  as 
ous  paths   and  labyrinthine  channels,  swamps  have  always  Peaces  of 
afforded   a   refuge    for   individuals   and   peoples ;   and   there-  r 
fore  as  places  of  defense  they  have  played  no  inconspicuous 
part  in  history.     What  the  Dismal  Swamp  of  North  Caro- 
lina and  the  cypress  swamps  of  Louisiana  were  to  the  run- 
away slaves,  that  the  Everglades  of  Florida  have  been  to 
the  defeated  Seminoles.     In  that  half-solid,  half-fluid  area, 
penetrable   only   to  the  native  Indian   who  poles  his   canoe 
along   its    tortuous   channels   of   liquid   mud,   the   Seminoles 


372        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 

have  set  up  their  villages  on  the  scattered  hummocks  of  solid 
land,  and  there  maintained  themselves,  a  tribe  of  350  souls, 
despite  all  efforts  of  the  United  States  government  to  re- 
move them  to  the  Indian  Territory.  The  swamps  of  the 
Nile  delta  have  been  the  asylum  of  Egyptian  independence 
from  the  time  King  Amysis  took  refuge  there  for  fifty  years 
during  an  invasion  of  the  Ethiopians,109  to  the  retreat  thither 
of  Amyrtaeus,  a  prince  of  Sais,  after  his  unsuccessful  revolt 
against  the  Persian  conqueror  Artaxerxes  I.11C  The  Isle  of 
Athelney  among  the  marshes  of  the  Parret  River  afforded  a 
refuge  to  Alfred  the  Great  and  a  band  of  his  followers  during 
the  Danish  invasion  of  Wessex  in  878,111  while  the  Isle  of 
Ely  in  the  Fenland  was  another  point  of  sustained  resistance 
to  the  invaders.  It  was  the  Fenland  that  two  hundred  years 
later  was  the  last  stronghold  of  Saxon  resistance  to  William 
of  Normandy.  Here  on  the  Isle  of  FJj  the  outlawed  leader 
Hereward  maintained  Saxon  independence,  till  the  Conqueror 
at  last  constructed  a  long  causeway  across  the  marshes  to 
the  "Camp  of  Refuge."112 

The  spirit  The   spirit   of   the   marshlands   is   the   spirit   of    freedom. 

of  the  Therefore  these  small  and  scarcely  habitable  portions  of  the 

land  assume  an  historical  dignity  and  generate  stirring 
historical  events  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  size  and  popu- 
lation. Their  content  is  ethical  rather  than  economic.  They 
attract  to  their  fastnesses  the  vigorous  souls  protesting 
against  conquest  or  oppression,  and  then  by  their  natural 
protection  sustain  and  nourish  the  spirit  of  liberty.  It  was 
the  water-soaked  lowlands  of  the  Rhine  that  enabled  the 
early  Batavians,113  Ditmarscher  and  Frieslanders  to  assert 
and  to  maintain  their  independence,  generated  the  love  of 
independence  among  the  Dutch  and  helped  them  defend  their 
liberty  against  the  Spanish114  and  French.  So  the  Fenland 
of  England  was  the  center  of  resistance  to  the  despotism  of 
King  John,  who  therefore  fixed  his  headquarters  for  the 
suppression  of  the  revolt  at  Lincoln  and  his  military  depot 
at  Lynn.  Later  in  the  conflict  of  the  barons  with  Henry 
III,  Simon  de  Montfort  and  other  disaffected  nobles  en- 
trenched themselves  in  the  islands  of  Ely  and  Axholm,  till 
the  Provisions  of  Oxford  in  1267  secured  them  some  de- 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        373 

gree  of  constitutional  rights.115  Four  centuries  later  the 
same  spirit  sent  many  Fenlanders  to  the  support  of  Crom- 
well. 

A  river  that  spreads  out  into  the  indeterminate  earth-  Economic 
form  of  a  marsh  is  an  effective  barrier ;  but  one  that  gathers  an(^  politi- 
its  waters  into  a  natural  basin  and  forms  a  lake  retains  the  c< 
uniting  power  of  a  navigable  stream  and  also,  by  the  exten- 
sion  of  its  area  and  elimination  of  its  current,  approaches 
the  nature  of  an  enclosed  sea.  Mountain  rivers,  characterized 
by  small  volume  and  turbulent  flow,  first  become  navigable 
when  they  check  their  impetuosity  and  gather  their  store  of 
water  in  some  lake  basin.  The  whole  course  of  the  upper 
Rhone,  from  its  glacier  source  on  the  slope  of  Mount  Furca 
to  its  confluence  with  the  Saone  at  Lyon,  is  unfit  for  naviga- 
tion, except  where  it  lingers  in  Lake  Geneva.  The  same 
thing  is  true  of  the  Reuss  in  Lake  Lucerne,  the  upper  Rhine 
in  Lake  Constance,  the  Aare  in  Thun  and  Brienze,  and  the 
Linth  in  Lake  Zurich.  Hence  such  torrent-fed  lakes  assume 
economic  and  political  importance  in  mountainous  regions, 
owing  to  the  paucity  of  navigable  waterways.  The  lakes 
of  Alpine  Switzerland  and  Italy  and  of  Highland  Scotland 
form  so  many  centers  of  intercourse  and  exchange.  Even 
such  small  bodies  of  water  as  the  Alpine  lakes  have  therefore 
become  goals  of  expansion,  so  that  we  find  the  shores  of 
Geneva,  Maggiore,  Lugano,  and  Garda,  each  shared  by  two 
countries.  Switzerland,  the  Austrian  Tyrol,  and  the  three 
German  states  of  Baden,  Wurtemberg  and  Bavaria,  have  all 
managed  to  secure  a  frontage  upon  Lake  Constance.  Lake 
Titicaca,  lying  12,661  feet  (3854  meters)  above  sea  level 
but  affording  a  navigable  course  136  miles  (220  kilometers) 
long,  is  an  important  waterway  for  Peru  and  Bolivia.  In 
the  central  Sudan,  where  aridity  reduces  the  volume  of  all 
streams,  even  the  variable  and  indeterminate  Lake  Chad 
has  been  an  eagerly  sought  objective  for  expanding 
boundaries.  Twenty  years  ago  it  was  divided  among  the 
native  states  of  Bornu,  Bagirmi  and  Kanem;  today  it  is 
shared  by  British  Nigeria,  French  Sudan,  and  German 
Kamerun.  The  erratic  northern  extension  of  the  German 
boundary  betrays  the  effort  to  reach  this  goal. 


374        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 

Lakes  as  The  uniting  power  of  lakes  manifests  itself  in  the  tendency 

nuclei  of        of  such  basins  to  become  the  nuclei  of  states.     Attractive  to 
8tatefl*  settlement    in    primitive    times,    because    of    the    protected 

frontier  they  afford — a  motive  finding  its  most  emphatic 
expression  in  the  pile  villages  of  the  early  lake-dwellers — 
later  because  of  the  fertility  of  their  bordering  soil  and  the 
opportunity  for  friendly  intercourse,  they  gradually  unite 
their  shores  in  a  mesh  of  reciprocal  relations,  which  finds  its 
ultimate  expression  in  political  union.  It  is  a  significant 
fact  that  the  Swiss  Confederation  originated  in  the  four 
forest  cantons  of  Lucerne,  Schwyz,  Uri  and  Unterwalden, 
which  are  linked  together  by  the  jagged  basin  of  Lake 
Lucerne  or  the  Lake  of  the  Four  Forest  Cantons,  as  the  Swiss 
significantly  call  it,  but  are  otherwise  divided  by  mountain 
barriers.  So  we  find  that  Lake  Titicaca  was  the  cradle  of  the 
Inca  Empire,  just  as  Lake  Tezcoco  was  that  of  the  Toltecs 
in  Mexico  and  an  island  in  Lake  Chalco  later  that  of  the 
Aztec  domain.11'  The  most  stable  of  the  short-lived  native 
states  of  Africa  have  apparently  found  an  element  of  strength 
and  permanence  in  a  protected  lake  frontier.  Such  are  the 
petty  kingdoms  of  Bornu,  Bagirmi  and  Kanem  on  Lake  Chad, 
and  Uganda  on  Victoria  Nyanza. 

Large  lakes,  which  include  in  their  area  islands,  peninsulas, 
tides,  currents,  fiords,  inlets,  deltas,  and  dunes,  and  present 
every  geographical  feature  of  an  enclosed  sea,  approach  the 
latter  too  in  historical  importance.  Some  of  the  largest, 
however,  have  long  borne  the  name  of  seas.  The  Caspian, 
which  exceeds  the  Baltic  in  area,  and  the  Aral,  which  out- 
ranks Lake  Michigan,  show  the  closest  physical  resemblance 
to  thalassic  basins,  because  of  their  size,  salinity  and  enclosed 
drainage  systems;  but  their  anthropo-geographical  signifi- 
cance is  slight.  The  very  salinity  which  groups  them  with 
the  sea  points  to  an  arid  climate  that  forever  deprives  them 
of  the  densely  populated  coasts  characteristic  of  most  en- 
closed seas,  and  hence  reduces  their  historical  importance. 
Their  tributary  streams,  robbed  of  their  water  by  irrigation 
canals,  like  "the  shorn  and  parcelled  Oxus",  renounce  their 
function  of  highways  into  the  interior.  To  this  rule  the 
Volga  is  a  unique  exception.  Finally,  cut  off  from  union 


LAKE  OF  THE  FOUR 

BIRTHPLACE  OF  THE  S 


OREST  CANTONS. 

ss  CONFEDERATION 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        375 

with  the  ocean,  these  salt  lakes  lose  the  supreme  historical 
adv&ntage  which  is  maintained  by  freshwater  lakes,  like 
Ladoga,  Nyassa,  Maracaibo  and  the  Great  Lakes  of  North 
America,  all  lying  near  sea  level. 

Lakes  as  part  of  a  system  of  inland  waterways  may  pos-  Lakes  as 
sess  commercial  importance  surpassing  that  of  many  seas,  fresh  water 
This  depends  upon  the  productivity,  accessibility  and  extent 
of  their  hinterland,  and  this  in  turn  depends  upon  the  size 
and  shape  of  the  inland  basin.  The  chain  of  the  five  Great 
Lakes,  which  together  present  a  coastline  of  four  thousand 
miles  and  a  navigable  course  as  long  as  the  Baltic  between 
the  Skager  Rack  and  the  head  of  the  Gulf  of  Bothnia,  consti- 
tutes a  freshwater  Mediterranean.  It  has  played  the  part  of 
an  enclosed  sea  in  American  history  and  has  enabled  the 
Atlantic  trade  to  penetrate  1400  miles  inland  to  Chicago 
and  Duluth.  Its  shores  have  therefore  been  a  coveted  object 
of  territorial  expansion.  The  early  Dutch  trading  posts 
headed  up  ttie  Hudson  and  Mohawk  toward  Lake  Ontario, 
as  did  the  English  settlements  which  succeeded  them.  The 
French,  from  their  vantage  point  at  Montreal,  threw  out  a 
frail  casting-net  of  fur  stations  and  missions,  which  caught 
and  held  all  the  Lakes  for  a  time.  Later  the  American 
shores  were  divided  among  eight  of  our  states.  The  northern 
boundaries  of  Indiana  and  Illinois  were  fixed  by  Congress 
for  the  express  purpose  of  giving  these  commonwealths  access 
to  Lake  Michigan.  Pennsylvania  with  great  difficulty  suc- 
ceeded in  protruding  her  northwestern  frontier  to  cover  a 
meager  strip  of  Erie  coast,  while  New  York's  frontage 
on  the  same  lake  became  during  the  period  of  canal  and 
early  railroad  construction,  a  great  factor  in  her  develop- 
ment. 

In  1901,  the  tonnage  of  our  merchant  vessels  on  the  Great 
Lakes  was  half  that  of  our  Pacific,  Atlantic  and  Gulf  coasts 
combined,117  constituting  a  freshwater  fleet  greater  than  the 
merchant  marine  of  either  France  or  sea-bred  Norway.  A 
remote  but  by  no  means  faint  echo  of  this  fact  is  found  in 
the  five  hundred  or  more  boats,  equally  available  for  trade 
or  war,  which  Henry  M.  Stanley  saw  the  Uganda  prince 
muster  on  the  shore  of  Victoria  Nyanza  Lake. 


376       ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 

Ocean,  sea,  bay,  estuary,  river,  swamp,  lake:  here  is 
Nature's  great  circle  returning  upon  itself,  a  circle  faintly 
notched  into  arcs,  but  one  in  itself  and  one  in  man's  uses. 


NOTES    TO    CHAPTER    XI 

1.  Isabella  B.  Bishop,  The  Yangtze  Valley  and  Beyond,  Vol.  I,  pp.  26- 
27.     New  York  and  London,  1900. 

2.  Fiske,  Discovery  of  America,  Vol.  I,  p.  492.     Boston,  1892. 

3.  Capt.  James  Cook,  Voyage  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  1776-1780,  Vol.  11, 
pp.  321-332.    New  York,  1796. 

4.  John  Richard  Green,  The  Making  of  England,  Vol.  I,  pp.  63-66,  84- 
86,  95,  96.     London,  1904. 

5.  E.  Lavisse,  Histoire  de  France,  Vol.  II,  Part  I,  pp.  374-375,  378-379, 
381-382,  385-386.     Paris,  1903. 

6.  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  I,  pp.   189-191,  map.     New 
York,  1902-1906. 

7.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  192-194. 

8.  G.  W.  Kitchen,  History  of  France,  Vol.  I,  pp.  59-60.    Oxford,  1892. 

9.  Dietrich    Schaeffer,    Die    Hansestddte    und    Konig    Waldemar    von 
Dancmark,  p.  36.    Jena,  1879. 

10.  G.   G.   Chisholm,  Commercial   Geography,   p.   311.      London,    1904. 

11.  Capt.  A.  T.  Mahan,  The  Problem  of  Asia,  pp.  41,  60,  120.     New 
York,  1900. 

12.  Isabella  B.  Bishop,  The  Yangtze  Valley  and  Beyond,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
97-98.     New  York  and  London,  1900. 

13.  E.  C.   Semple,  Development  of  the  Hanse  Towns  in  Relation  to 
their  Geographic  Environment,  Bulletin  Amer.  Geog.  Soc.,  Vol.  31.     No. 
3.     1899. 

14.  Nordenskiold,  Voyage  of  the  Vega,  pp.  519-530,  552.     New  York, 
1882.     Anatole  Leroy-Beaulieu,  The  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  Vol.  I,  Note 
pp.  278-281.     New  York,  1902. 

15.  Agnes  Laut,  Voyagers  of  the  Northern  Ocean,  Harper 's  Magazine, 
January,  1906. 

16.  Alexis  Krausse,  Russia  in  Asia,  pp.  21-54.     New  York,  1899. 

17  Felix  Dubois,  Timbuctoo,  pp.  198-199,  251-257.     New  York,  1896. 

18.  Ibid.,  p.  38. 

19.  D.  Livingstone,  Missionary  Travels,  pp.  71,  177.  New  York,  1858. 

20.  W.  Deecke,  Italy,  p.  87.     London,  1904. 

21.  G.   Adam   Smith,   Historical   Geography   of  the   Holy   Land,   map 
facing  p.  167;  also  pp.  287,  327-328.    New  York,  1897. 

22.  F.   M.   Stapff,   Karte   des  unteren  Khiusebthal,  Petermanns  Mit- 
tetiungen,  p.  202.    July,  1885. 

23.  Strabo,  Book  III,  chap.  II,  4. 

24.  For  full  discussion,  see  Roscher,  National -Oekonomik  des  Handels 
und  Gewerbefleisses.     Stuttgart,  1889. 

25.  Rambaud,  History  of  Russia,  Vol.  I,  pp.  24-28.     Boston,  1886. 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        377 

26.  A.  B.  Hulbert,  Historic  Highways  of  America,  Vol.  VII,  Portage 
Paths,  pp.  182-183,  187-188.     Cleveland,  1903. 

27.  Herodotus,  Book  I,  194.    A  H.  Layard,  Nineveh  and  Its  Remains, 
Vol.  II,  pp.  79-81.     New  York,  1849. 

28.  Charles  W.  Hawes,  The  Uttermost  East,  p.  60.     New  York,  1904. 

29.  Transportation  by  Water  in   1906,  Table  30,  p.   181.     Report  of 
Department  of  Commerce  and  Labor,  Washington,   1908. 

30.  G.  G.  Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  p.  277.     London,  1904. 

31.  E.  A.  Freeman,  Historical  Geography  of  Europe,  p.  466.    London. 
1882. 

32.  J.   Ellis  Barker,  Modern   Germany,  pp.     68-85.     London,   1907. 

33.  Heinrich  von  Treitschke,  PolttiJc,  Vol.  I,  p.  218.     Leipzig,  1897. 

34.  E.  A.  Freeman,  Historical  Geography  of  Europe,  p.  466.     London, 
1882. 

35.  G.  G.  Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  p.  511.     London,  1904. 

36.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  p.  318.     London,   1903. 

37.  Ratzel,  Politische  Geographic,  pp.  739-740.    Munich,  1903. 

38.  Annual  Register  for  1901,  p.  358.     New  Series,  London  and  New 
York,  1902. 

39.  H.  R,  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  958.     New  York,  1902. 

40.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  473.     London,  1896-1898. 

41.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  406.     New  York,  1902. 

42.  G.    G.    Chisholm,   Commercial    Geography,   map    p.    312.      London, 
1904. 

43.  Blanqui,  History  of  Political  Economy,  pp.  273,  277,  296.    'New 
York,  1880. 

44.  Albert  Gallatin,  American  State  Papers,  Misc.  Doc.,  Vol.  I,  No.  250. 
Washington,  1834. 

45.  Roscher,    National-OekonomiJc    des    Handels    und    Gewerbefleisses, 
pp.  449,  453-454.     Stuttgart,  1889. 

46.  H.   R.   Mill,   International   Geography,   pp.   530-531.      New   York, 
1902. 

47.  G.   G.  Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  pp.   310,  312.     London, 
1904. 

48.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  p.  314.     London,  1903. 

49.  Statesman's  Yearbook  for   1907. 

50.  Henry    Norman,    All    the    Russias,    pp.    254-255,    285-292.      New 
York,  1902. 

51.  E.   C.  Semple,  American  History  and  Its  Geographic  Conditions, 
pp.  251-255.    Boston,  1903. 

52.  E.  F.  Knight,  Where  Three  Empires  Meet,  p.  6.     London,  1897. 

53.  Strabo,  Book  IV,  chap.  VI,  7. 

54.  Alexis  Krausse,  Russia  in  Asia,  pp.  361-362.     New  York,  1899. 

55.  Angus  Hamilton,  Afghanistan,  pp.  137-141.     New  York  and  Lon- 
don, 1906.     Henry  Norman,  All  the  Russias,  pp.   276-277.     New  York, 
1902. 

56.  Bello  Gallico,  Book  IV,  chap.  IV. 

57.  Ibid.,  Book  I,  chap.  XXXI;  Book  II,  chap.  Ill;  Book  IV,  chap.  I. 

58.  Journals   of   Dr.    Thomas   Walker    and   Christopher    Gist,   p.    129. 
Filson  Club  Publications,  Louisville,   1898. 


378        ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS 

59.  H.  R.  Schoolcraft,  Indian  Tribes  of  the  United  States,  Vol.  Ill, 
pp.   248-249.     Philadelphia,   1853. 

60.  Martha   K.   Genthe,   The  Valley  Towns  of   Connecticut,  Bull,   of 
Amer.  Geog.  Society,  Vol.  39,  pp.  1-7.     New  York,  1907. 

61.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  181-182,  192.     London, 
1898. 

62.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  495.     New  York,  1902. 

63.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  284-285.     New  York,  1899. 

64.  Ibid.,  Maps  pp.  222,  340,  350. 

65.  Ibid.,  Maps  pp.  402,  429. 

66.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  pp.  43,  241.     London,  1903. 

67.  Ibid.,  p.  69.     Sydow-Wagner,  Methodischer  Schul-Atlas,  compare 
maps  No.  13  and  No.  'J.~>. 

68.  Elisee  Reclus,   Europe,   Vol.    IV,  pp.    380,   389-390.     New   York, 
1882". 

69.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  p.  318,  map.    New  York,  1899. 

70.  H.  J.  Mackinder,  Britain  and  the  British  Seas,  pp.  202-203.     Lon- 
don, 1904. 

71.  Boyd  Alexander,  From  the  Niger  to  the  Nile,  Vol.  I,  pp.  168,  169, 
232,  306-307.     London,  1907. 

72.  Livingstone,  Missionary  Travels,  pp.   102,  642.     New  York,  1858. 

73.  See  Century  Atlas,  maps  of  Mississippi,  Louisiana  and  Arkansas 
for  boundary  line  of  1850. 

74.  Sir  Thomas  Holdich,  India,  p.  57.     London,  1905. 

75.  Strabo,  Book  X,  chap.  II,  19. 

76.  Henry  M.  Stanley,  Through  the  Dark  Continent,  Vol.  II,  pp.  120- 
124,   155-158,   168,   169,   173,   176,   177,   182,  266-274,   327.     New   York, 
1879. 

77.  Boyd  Alexander,  From  the  Niger  to  the  Nile,  Vol.  II,  pp.  252, 
269-270.     London,  1907. 

78.  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  I,  pp.   189,   192-194.     New 
York,  1902-1906. 

79.  Cyrus    Thomas,    Mound     Explorations,    pp.     526-527,    531,     551. 
Twelfth  Annual  Report  of  Bureau  of  Ethnology,   Washington,   1894. 

80.  Parkman,  The  Old  Regime  in  Canada,  pp.  292-303.     Boston,  1904. 
E.  C.  Semple,  The  Influences  of  Geographic  Environment  on  the  Lower 
St.  Lawrence,  Bull,  of  Amer.  Geog.  Society,  Vol.  36,  pp.  449-466.    1904. 

81.  Martha   Krug   Genthe,   Valley   Towns   of   Connecticut,   pp.    10-12, 
figures  V.  and  VI,  Bull,  of  Amer.  Geog.  Society,  Vol.  39,  1907. 

82.  J.  Nacken,  Die  Proving  Kwantung  und  Hire  Bevolkerung,  Peter- 
manns  Mitteilungen,  Vol.  24,  p.  421,  1878.     W.  M.  Wood,  Fankwei,  pp. 
276-277.    New  York,  1859. 

83.  Felix  Dubois,  Timbuctoo,  pp.   19-22,  38.     New  York,  1896. 

84.  Isabella  B.  Bishop,  The  Yangtze  Valley  and  Beyond,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
164,  174-175,  179,  182,  189,  215.     London  and  Ne\v  York,  1900. 

85.  William  Walton,  Paris,  Vol.  I,  pp.  31-32,  35.     Philadelphia,  1899. 

86.  Caesar,  Bello  Gallico,  Book  VIII,  chaps,  57,  58. 

87.  Henry  M.  Stanley,  Through  the  Dark  Continent,  Vol.  II,  pp.  227- 
228.    New  York,  1879. 

88.  Article,  Cossack,  Encyclopedia  Britannica. 


ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  OF  RIVERS        379 

89.  Parkman,   The  Jesuits  in  North  America,  pp.   292-303,   498-505, 
534,  535.     Boston,  1904. 

90.  Livingstone,  Missionary  Travels,  pp.  100,  102.     New  York,  1858. 

91.  Livingstone,  Last  Journals,  Vol.  I,  p.  359.     London,  1874. 

92.  Heinrich  Barth,  Travels  in  North  and  Central  Africa,  Vol.  II,  pp. 
64,  66,  233.     New  York,  1857.     Boyd  Alexander,  From  the  Niger  to  the 
Nile,  Vol.  I,  pp.  237,  303-304,  320,  331-336;  Vol.  II,  pp.  54,  56-58,  67-68, 
96-99,  104-105.     London,  1907. 

93.  J.  P.  McLean,  The  Mound  Builders,  p.  20.    Cincinnati,  1904.   Squier 
and  Davis,  Ancient  Monuments  of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  pp.  6,  9,  10. 
New  York,  1848. 

94.  Caesar,  Bello  Gallico,  Book  I,  chaps.  38,  39. 

95.  Elisee  Eeclus,  Europe,  Vol.   IV,  pp.    101-102.     New  York,   1882. 

96.  John  Fiske,  Dutch  and   Quaker  Colonies  in  America,  Vol.   I,  p. 
241.     Boston. 

97.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  956.     New  York,  1902. 

98.  H.   B.   George,   Historical  Geography   of  the   British   Empire,   pp. 
259-260.     London,  1904. 

99.  Alexis  Krausse,  Russia  in  Asia,  pp.  30-33,  50.     New  York,  1899. 

100.  H.    J.    Mackinder,    Britain    and   the    British    Seas,   pp.    198-199. 
London,  1904. 

101.  John  Richard  Green,  The  Making  of  England,  Vol.  I,  pp.  63,  66. 
London,  1904. 

102.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  p.   102.     London,   1903. 

103.  Miller  and  Skertchley,  The  Fenland  Past  and  Present,  pp.  10,  11, 
27-30.     London,  1878. 

104.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  322-323.     Map  p.  327.     New 
York,  1899. 

105.  Anatole  Leroy-Beaulieu,  The  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  Vol.  I,  p.  108. 
New  York,  1893. 

106.  Ibid.,  pp.  104-106.     W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  340-342, 
352,  365.     New  York,  1899. 

107.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  p.  135.     London,  1903. 

108.  Ibid.,  p.  133.    W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  294-295.    New 
York,  1899. 

109.  Herodotus,  II,  137,  140. 

110.  Thucydides,  I,  110.     Brugsch-Bey,  History  of  Egypt,  Vol.  II,  p. 
333.     London,  1881. 

111.  John  Richard  Green,  History  of  the  English  People,  Vol.  I,  chap. 
Ill,  p.  71. 

112.  Miller  and  Skertchley,   The  Fenland  Past  and  Present,  pp.   83, 
101,  104,  107,  108.     London',  1878. 

113.  Tacitus,  History  of  the  Germans,  Book  VI,  chap.  VI.     Motley, 
Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  Vol.  I,  pp.  2-5,  13.     New  York,  1885. 

114.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  p.  299.     London,  1903. 

115.  Miller  and  Skertchley,  The  Fenland  Past  and  Present,  pp.  113- 
114.     London,  1878. 

116.  Edward  John  Payne,  History  of  the  New  World  Called  America, 
Vol.   I,  pp.  327-328,  502-503.     Oxford,   1892.     Ratzel,  History  of  Man- 
kind, Vol.  II,  p.  163.    London,  1896-1898. 

117.  U.  S.  Report  of  Commission  of  Navigation,  p.  10.     Washington 
1901. 


CHAPTER  XII 


Insularity 
of  the 
land- 
masses. 


CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 

THE  division  of  the  earth's  surface  into  28  per  cent,  land 
and  72  per  cent,  water  is  an  all  important  fact  of  physical 
geography  and  anthropo-geography.  Owing  to  this  pro- 
portion, the  land-masses,  which  alone  provide  habitats  for 
man,  rise  as  islands  out  of  the  three-fold  larger  surface  of  the 
uninhabitable  ocean.  Consequently,  the  human  species,  like 
the  other  forms  of  terrestrial  life,  bears  a  deeply  ingrained 
insular  character.  Moreover,  the  water  causes  different 
degrees  of  separation  between  the  land-masses,  according  as 
it  appears  as  inlet,  strait,  sea,  an  island-strewn  or  islandless 
ocean ;  it  determines  the  grouping  of  the  habitable  areas  and 
consequently  the  geographic  basis  of  the  various  degrees 
of  ethnic  and  cultural  kinship  between  the  divisions  of  land. 
Finally,  since  the  sea  is  for  man  only  a  highway  to  some  ul- 
terior shore,  this  geography  of  the  land-masses  in  relation 
to  the  encompassing  waters  points  the  routes  and  goals  of 
human  wanderings. 

Each  fragment  of  habitable  land,  large  or  small,  continent 
or  isiet,  means  a  corresponding  group  or  detachment  of  the 
vast  human  family.  Its  size  fixes  the  area  at  the  service  of 
the  group  which  occupies  it.  Its  location,  however,  may 
either  endow  it  with  a  neighborliness  like  that  subsisting 
between  Africa  and  Europe  and  involving  an  interwoven  his- 
tory ;  or  remoteness  like  that  of  South  America  from 
Australia,  so  complete  that,  even  the  close  net  of  intercourse 
thrown  by  modern  commerce  over  the  whole  world  has  scarcely 
sufficed  to  bring  them  into  touch.  Therefore  the  highly 
irregular  distribution  of  the  land  areas,  here  compactly 
grouped,  there  remote,  deserves  especial  attention,  since  it 
produces  far-reaching  results.  Finally,  continents  and 
islands,  by  their  zonal  situation,  their  land  forms,  rainfall, 
river  systems,  flora  and  fauna,  produce  for  man  varied  life 


CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS    381 


conditions,  which  in  their  turn  are  partially  dependent  upon 
the  size  and  grouping  of  the  land-masses. 

A  comparison  of  the  large  and  small  land-masses  of  the  Classifica- 
earth  from  the  standpoint  of  both  physical  and  anthropologi-  ^on  0* 
cal   geography  yields  a  classification   based  upon  size  and   * 
location   on   the  one  hand,   and  historical  influences  on  the       Aa  t< 


other.      The  following   table   indicates   the   relation   between  size 
the  two.  location, 

I.  Independent  Land-masses. 

A.  Continents.  Independent   by    reason    of    size,   which 
enables  them  to  support  a  large  number  of  people 
and  afford  the  conditions  for  civilization. 

(a)  Insular     continents,     whose     primitive     and 
modern    development    are    marked    by    remoteness. 
Australia. 

(b)  Neighboring  continents,  separated  by  narrow 
seas   and   showing  community   of  historical   events. 
Europe    and    Africa.      Asia    and    North    America 
around  Bering  Sea. 

B.  Islands.     Independent  by  reason  of  location. 

(a)  Oceanic    islands,    characterized   by    greatest 
remoteness  from  continents   and  other  islands,  and 
also  by  independent  or  detached  history.    St.  Helena 
and  Iceland. 

(b)  Member  of  a  group  of  oceanic  islands,  there- 
fore less  independent.     Hawaii,  Fayal  in  the  Azores, 
Tongatabu. 

(c)  Large  islands,  approaching  by  reason  of  size 
the  independence  of  continents  and  thereby  finding 
compensation  for  a  less  independent  location.     New 
Guinea,  Borneo,  Madagascar  ;  in  a  cultural  sense, 
Great  Britain  and  Japan. 

II.  Dependent  Land-masses. 

(a)  Inshore  or  coast  islands,  whose  history  is  inti- 
mately connected  with  that  of  the  nearby  mainland. 
Euboea,  Long  Island,  Vancouver,  Sakhalin,  Ceylon. 

(b)  Neighboring    islands,    showing   less    intimate 
historical  relations.     Formosa,  the  Canaries,  Ireland 
in  contrast  to  Great  Britain. 


382    CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 

(c)  Islands   of   enclosed   or   marginal   seas,   con- 
tained in  a  circle  of  lands  and  exposed  to  constant 
intercourse  from   all  sides.      Jamaica,  Java,  Crete, 
Sicily,  Zealand,  Gotland,  St.  Lawrence  in  Bering  Sea. 

(d)  Island   groups   not  to  be   considered   apart 
from  other  groups.    Samoa,  Fiji  and  Friendly  Isles; 
Philippine,  Sulu  and  Sunda  Islands;  Greater  and 
Lesser  Antilles. 

Effect  of  As  the  homes  of  man,  these  land-masses  vary  greatly  owing 

*"*  °*  to   difference   of    size.      Only   the   six   continents    have   been 

large  enough  to  generate  great  bodies  of  people,  to  produce 
differentiated  branches  of  the  human  family,  and  to  main- 
tain them  in  such  numerical  force  that  alien  intermixtures 
were  powerless  essentially  to  modify  the  gradually  developing 
ethnic  type.  The  larger  continents  are  marked  by  such  diver- 
sity of  climate,  relief  and  contour,  that  they  have  afforded 
the  varied  environments  and  the  area  for  the  development  of 
several  great  types  or  sub-types  of  mankind.  Australia 
has  been  just  large  enough  to  produce  one  distinct  native 
race,  the  result  of  a  very  ancient  blend  of  Papuan  and  Ma- 
layan stocks.  But  prevailing  aridity  has  cast  a  mantle  of 
monotony  over  most  of  the  continent,  nullifying  many  local 
geographic  differences  in  highland  and  lowland,  curtailing 
the  available  area  of  its  already  restricted  surface,  and  hence 
checking  the  differentiation  that  results  cither  from  the  com- 
petition of  large  numbers  or  from  a  varied  environment.  We 
find  Australia  characterized  above  all  other  continents  by 
monotony  of  culture,  mode  of  life,  customs,  languages,  and 
a  uniform  race  type  from  the  Murray  River  to  York 
peninsula.1  The  twin  continents  of  the  Americas  developed 
a  race  singularly  uniform  in  its  physical  traits,2  if  we  leave 
out  of  account  the  markedly  divergent  Eskimos,  but  display- 
ing a  wide  range  of  political,  social  and  economic  develop- 
ments, from  the  small,  unorganized  groups  of  wandering 
savages,  like  the  desert  Shoshones  and  coast  Fuegians,  to 
the  large,  stable  empire  of  the  Incas,  with  intensive  agricul- 
ture, public  works,  a  state  religion  and  an  enlightened 
government. 

Even  the  largest  islands  of  the  world,  such  as  Borneo, 


CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS    383 

New  Guinea  and  Madagascar,  show  no  such  independent 
ethnic  development.  This  is  the  distinguishing  characteristic 
of  the  largest  land-masses.  Europe,  except  on  the  basis  of 
its  size  and  peninsula  form,  has  no  title  to  the  name  of  conti- 
nent ;  certainly  not  on  anthropo-geographical  grounds.  Its 
classification  as  a  continent  arose  in  the  Mediterranean 
among  the  Greeks,  as  a  geographical  expression  of  the  an- 
tagonism between  themselves  and  their  Carian,  Phoenician  and 
Persian  enemies  across  the  Aegean ;  the  idea  had  therefore 
a  political  origin,  and  was  formed  without  knowledge  of  that 
vast  stretch  of  plains  between  the  Black  Sea  and  the  Arctiq 
Ocean,  where  Asia's  climate  and  races  lap  over  into  Europe, 
and  where  to-day  we  find  the  Muscovite  Empire,  in  point  of 
geographic  conditions,  its  underlying  ethnic  stock  and 
form  of  government,  as  much  Asiatic  as  European.  The  real 
or  western  Europe,  which  the  Roman  Empire  gradually  added 
to  the  narrow  Europe  of  the  Greeks,  and  which  is  strik- 
ingly contrasted  to  Asia  in  point  of  size,  relief,  contour, 
climate  and  races,  only  served  to  maintain  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  two  continents  in  men's  minds.  But  from  a  geo- 
graphical standpoint  the  distinction  is  an  error.  It  has 
confused  the  interpretation  of  the  history  of  the  Greeks  and 
the  development  of  the  Russians.  It  has  brought  disorder 
into  the  question  of  the  European  or  Asiatic  origin  of  the 
Aryan  linguistic  family,  which  the  anthropo-geographer 
would  assign  to  the  single  continent  of  Eurasia.  The  inde- 
pendent development  that  falls  to  the  lot  of  great  world 
islands  like  the  Americas  and  Australia  is  impossible  in  a 
peninsular  continent  like  Europe,  large  as  it  is. 

The  independence  of  a  land-mass  is  based  not  alone  on  Independ- 
size:  there  is  also  an  independence  of  location.     This,  owing  ence  of 
to  the  spherical  form  of  the  earth,  tends  to  be  neutralized 
by  the  independence  based  upon  large  area.     The  larger  a  dei)en(ience 
land-mass  is,  the  nearer  it  approaches  to  others.     Eurasia,  Of  size. 
the  largest  of  all  the  continents,  comes  into  close  proximity 
and  therefore  close  relations  with  Africa,  North  America, 
and  even  Australia ;  whereas  Australia  is  at  once  the  smallest 
and  the  most  isolated  of  the  continents.  The  remote  oceanic 
islands  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  measuring  only  a  few  square 


384    CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 


The  case 
of  Asia. 


Location 
of  hemi- 
spheres 
and  ethnic 
kinship. 


miles  in  area,  have  a  location  so  independent  of  other  in- 
habited lands,  that  before  the  period  of  the  great  discoveries 
they  had  never  appeared  on  the  horizon  of  man. 

Asia's  size  and  central  location  to  the  other  continents 
were  formerly  taken  as  an  argument  for  its  correspond- 
ingly significant  position  in  the  creation  and  history  of  man. 
Its  central  location  is  reflected  in  the  hypothesis  of  the 
Asiatic  origin  of  the  Indo-European  linguistic  group  of 
peoples;  and  though  the  theory  has  been  justly  called  into 
question,  these  peoples  have  undoubtedly  been  subjected  to 
Asiatic  influences.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  native 
American  race,  both  as  to  Asiatic  origin  and  influences;  be- 
cause the  approximation  of  Siberia  to  Alaska  is  too  close  to 
exclude  human  relations  between  the  two  continents.  The 
Malays,  too,  were  probably  sprung  from  the  soil  of  south- 
eastern Asia  and  spread  thence  over  their  close-packed  Archi- 
pelago. Even  the  native  Australians  betray  a  Malayan  and 
therefore  Asiatic  element  in  their  composition,3  while  the 
same  element  can  be  traced  yet  more  distinctly  in  the  widely 
scattered  Polynesians  and  the  Hovas  of  Madagascar.  This 
radiation  of  races  seems  to  reflect  Asia's  location  at  the  core 
of  the  land-masses.  Yet  the  capacity  to  form  such  centers 
of  ethnic  distribution  is  not  necessarily  limited  to  the  largest 
continents;  history  teaches  us  that  small  areas  which  have 
early  achieved  a  relatively  dense  population  are  prone  to 
scatter  far  their  seeds  of  nations. 

The  continents  harbor  the  most  widely  different  races 
where  they  are  farthest  apart;  where  they  converge  most 
nearly,  they  show  the  closest  ethnic  kinships.  The  same  prin- 
ciple becomes  apparent  in  their  plants  and  animals.  The 
distribution  of  the  land-masses  over  the  earth  is  conspicuous 
for  their  convergence  in  the  north  and  divergence  in  long 
peninsular  forms  toward  the  south.  The  contrasted  group- 
ing is  reflected  in  both  the  lower  animals  and  the  peoples  inhabit- 
ing these  respectively  vicinal  and  remote  lands.  Only  where 
North  America  and  Eurasia  stretch  out  arms  to  one  another 
around  the  polar  sea  do  Eastern  and  Western  Hemisphere 
show  a  community  of  mammalian  forms.  These  are  all  strictly 
Arctic  animals,  such  as  the  reindeer,  elk,  Arctic  fox,  glutton 


CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS    385 

and  ermine.4  This  is  the  Boreal  sub-region  of  the  Holoarctic 
zoological  realm,  characterized  by  a  very  homogeneous  and 
very  limited  fauna.5  In  contrast,  the  portion  of  the  hemi- 
spheres lying  south  of  the  Tropic  of  Cancer  is  divided  into 
four  distinct  zoological  realms,  corresponding  to  Central  and 
South  America,  Africa  south  of  Sahara,  the  two  Indian 
peninsulas  with  the  adjacent  islands,  and  Australia.6  But 
when  we  consider  the  continental  extremities  projecting  be- 
yond the  Tropic  of  Capricorn,  where  geographic  divergence 
reaches  a  climax,  we  find  their  faunas  and  floras  utterly 
dissimilar,  despite  the  fact  that  climate  and  physical  condi- 
tions are  very  similar.7  We  find  also  widely  divergent  races 
in  the  southern  sections  of  Africa,  Australia  or  Tasmania 
and  South  America,  while  Arctic  Eurasia  and  America  come 
as  near  meeting  ethnically  as  they  do  geographically.  Here 
and  here  only  both  Eastern  and  Western  Hemisphere  show 
a  strong  affinity  of  race.  The  Eskimo,  long  classed  as  Mon- 
goloid, are  now  regarded  as  an  aberrant  variety  of  the  Ameri- 
can race,  owing  to  their  narrow  headform  and  linguistic 
affinity;  though  in  Alaska  even  their  headform  closely  ap- 
proximates the  Mongoloid  Siberian  type.8  But  in  stature, 
color,  oblique  eyes,  broad  flat  face,  and  high  cheek  bones, 
in  his  temperament  and  character,  artistic  productions  and 
some  aspects  of  his  culture,  he  groups  with  the  Asiatic  Hyper- 
boreans across  the  narrow  sixty  miles  of  water  forming 
Bering  Strait.9  In  the  northern  part  of  the  earth's  land  area, 
the  distribution  of  floras,  faunas,  and  races  shows  interde- 
pendence, intercourse;  in  the  southern,  separation,  isolation. 

What  is  true  where  the  hemispheres  come  together  is  true  Continental 
also  where  continents  converge.     The  core  of  the  Old  World  convergence 
is  found  in  the  Mediterranean  basin  where  Europe,  Asia  and  a 
Africa  form  a  close  circle  of  lands  and  where  they  are  in- 
habited by  the  one  white  Mediterranean  race.     Contrast  their 
racial  unity  about  this  common  center  with  the  extremes  of 
ethnic  divergence  in  their  remote  peripheries,  where  Teutons, 
Mongols,  Malays  and  Negroes  differ  widely  from  the  Mediter- 
ranean stock  and  from  each  other.    Eastern  Australia  repre- 
sents the  ethnic  antipodes  of  western  Asia,  in  harmony  with 
the  great  dividing  distance  between  them,  but  the  sides  of 


386    CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 

these  continents  facing  each  other  across  the  bridge  of  the 
Sunda  Islands  are  sparsely  strewn  with  a  common  Malay 
element. 

Africa's  Africa's  early  development  was  never  helped  by  the  fact 

location.  that  the  continent  lay  between  Asia  and  South  America.  It 
was  subjected  to  strong  and  persistent  Asiatic  influences, 
but  apparently  to  no  native  American  ones.  From  that  far-off 
trans-Atlantic  shore  came  no  signs  of  life.  Africa  appears 
in  history  as  an  appendage  of  Asia,  a  cultural  peninsula  of 
the  larger  continent.  This  was  due  not  only  to  the  Suez 
Isthmus  and  the  narrowness  of  the  Red  Sea  rift,  but  to  its 
one-sided  invasion  by  Asiatic  races  and  trade  from  the  east, 
while  the  western  side  of  the  continent  lay  buried  in  sleep, 
unstirred  by  any  voice  from  the  silent  shores  of  America. 
Semitic  influences,  in  successive  waves,  spread  over  the  Dark 
Continent  as  far  as  Morocco,  the  Senegal,  Niger,  Lake  Chad, 
Nyanza,  Tanganyika  and  Nyassa,  and  gave  it  such  light 
as  it  had  before  the  16th  century.  Only  after  the  Atlantic 
gulf  was  finally  crossed  did  influences  from  the  American 
side  of  the  ocean  begin  to  impinge  upon  the  West  African 
coast,  first  in  the  form  of  the  slave  and  rum  trade,  then  in 
the  more  humane  aspect  of  the  Liberian  colony.  But  with 
the  full  development  of  the  Atlantic  period  in  history,  we 
see  all  kinds  of  Atlantic  influences,  though  chiefly  from  the 
Atlantic  states  of  Europe,  penetrating  eastward  into  the 
heart  of  Africa,  and  there  meeting  other  commercial  and 
political  activities  pressing  inland  from  the  Indian  Ocean. 
The  Atlan-  The  long  Atlantic  rift  between  the  Eastern  and  Western 
tic  abyss.  Hemispheres,  which  was  such  a  potent  factor  in  the  primitive 
retardation  of  Africa  is,  from  the  standpoint  of  anthropo- 
geography,  the  most  important  feature  in  the  distribution 
of  the  land-masses  over  the  globe.  Not  till  the  discovery  of 
America  bridged  this  abyss  did  the  known  world  become 
a  girdle  round  the  earth.  Except  the  Norse  ventures 
to  the  American  continent  by  way  of  Iceland  and  Greenland 
between  1000  and  1347,  no  account  of  pre-Columbian  inter- 
course between  the  two  shores  of  the  Atlantic  has  ever  been 
substantiated.  Columbus  found  the  opposite  land  unfamiliar 
an  race  as  in  culture.  He  described  the  people  as  neither 


CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS    387 

whites  nor  blacks,  the  two  ethnic  types  which  he  knew  on 
the  eastern  side  of  the  Atlantic  abyss.  He  and  his  successors 
found  in  the  Americas  only  a  Stone  Age  culture,  a  stage 
already  outgrown  by  Europe  and  Africa.  These  continents 
from  Lapland  to  the  Hottentot  country  were  using  iron. 
Prior  to  the  voyage  of  the  great  Genoese,  Europe  gave  noth- 
ing to  America  and  received  nothing  from  it,  except  the  Gulf 
Stream's  scanty  cargo  of  driftwood  stranded  on  bleak  Ice- 
landic shores.  The  Tertiary  land-bridge  across  the  North 
Atlantic  between  Norway  and  Greenland  may  possibly  have 
guided  a  pre-Caucasic  migration  to  America  and  given  that 
continent  part  of  its  aboriginal  population.10  However,  no 
trace  of  any  European  stock  remains. 

The  collapse  of  the  bridge  at  the  close  of  the  Glacial  Epoch  Atlantic 
left  the  Atlantic  abyss  effectually  dividing  the  two  hemi-  |s^ands  un 
spheres.  Its  islands,  few  and  far  between,  were  helpless  to 
maintain  intercourse  between  the  opposite  shores ;  this  is 
proven  by  the  fact  that  all  of  them  from  Greenland  to  Tristan 
da  Cunha,  excepting  only  the  Canaries,  were  uninhabited  at 
the  time  of  their  discovery.  History  records  when  the  first 
bold  voyagers  came  upon  them  in  that  unmarked  waste  of 
waters,  and  gave  them  their  first  occupants.  The  political  up- 
heavals of  Norway  in  King  Harfagr's  time  (872)  sent  to  the 
Faroes  and  Iceland  their  first  settlers,  though  these  islands 
were  previously  known  to  the  Celts  of  Ireland.  The  Norse 
colonists  who  went  to  Greenland  in  the  year  1000  seem  to 
have  been  the  first  regular  settlers  on  those  inhospitable  coasts. 
They  found  no  native  inhabitants,  but  numerous  abandoned 
dwellings,  fragments  of  boats  and  stone  implements,11  which 
doubtless  recorded  the  intermittent  voyages  thither  of  the 
Eskimo,  preliminary  to  permanent  occupation.  The  Scan- 
dinavians did  not  encounter  natives  on  the  island  till  the  12th 
century,  when  Greenland  probably  received  its  first  Eskimo 
immigration.12 

While  the  Atlantic  thus   formed  a  long  north-and-south  Geograph- 
rift  across  the  inhabited  world  at  the  period  of  the  great  ical 
discoveries,  the  Pacific,  strewn  with  islands  and  land-rimmed 
at  its  northern  extremity  by  the  peninsulas  of  Alaska  and  pacjgc 
eastern  Siberia,  spread  a  nebula  of  population  from  the  dense 


388    CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 


Pacific 
affinities 
of  North 
American 
Indiani. 


centers  of  Asia  across  to  the  outskirts  of  America.  The 
general  Mongoloid  character  of  the  American  Indians  as  a 
race,  the  stronger  Asiatic  stamp  of  the  Western  Eskimo,  the 
unmistakeable  ethnic  and  cultural  affinities  of  the  Northwest 
Coast  tribes  both  with  southern  Polynesians  and  Asiatics,13 
all  point  to  America  as  the  great  eastern  wing  of  the  Mon- 
goloid or  Asiatic  area,  and  therefore  as  the  true  Orient  of 
the  world. 

Geographic  conditions  have  made  this  possible  or  even 
probable.  The  winds  and  currents  of  the  North  Pacific  set 
from  Japan  straight  toward  the  American  coast.  Junks 
blown  out  to  sea  from  China  or  Japan  have  been  carried  by 
the  Kuro  Siwo  and  the  prevailing  westerlies  across  the  Pacific 
to  our  continent.  There  is  record  of  a  hundred  instances  of 
this  occurence.14 

The  broken  bridge  across  Bering  Strait  formed  by  East 
Cape,  Cape  Prince  of  Wales  and  the  Diomede  Islands  between, 
and  further  south  the  natural  causeway  of  the  Commander 
and  Aleutian  Islands  leading  from  the  peninsula  of  Kam- 
chatka to  that  of  Unalaska,  have  facilitated  intercourse  be- 
tween Asia  and  America.15  Justin  Winsor  says,  "There  is 
hardly  a  stronger  demonstration  of  such  connection  between 
the  two  continents  than  the  physical  resemblances  of  the 
peoples  now  living  on  opposite  sides  of  the  Pacific  Ocean  in 
these  upper  latitudes."1"  This  resemblance  is  by  no  means 
confined  to  the  Eskimo  and  Chukches,  who  have  exchanged 
colonists  across  Bering  Sea.  Recent  investigations  have  re- 
vealed a  wider  kinship.  The  population  of  northern  Siberia 
speaks  in  general  Ural-Altaic  languages,  but  it  includes  a 
few  scattered  tribes  whose  singular  speech  excludes  them  from 
this  linguistic  group,  and  who  have  therefore  been  placed  by 
ethnologists  in  a  distinct  class  called  "paleasiatics"  or 
"hyperboreans."  This  class  is  composed  of  the  Ostyak  and 
Kot  on  the  Yenisei  River,  the  Gilyak  and  Ainos  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Amur  and  on  the  Kurile,  Sakhalin  and  Yezo  islands, 
the  Kamchadal  and  Koryak  of  Kamchatka,  and  the  Chukches 
and  Yukaghir  of  extreme  northeastern  Siberia.  As  far  back 
as  1850,  the  eminent  philologist  Robert  Latham  noted  a 
marked  linguistic  agreement,  both  in  structure  and  verbal 


CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS    389 

affinity,  between  our  Northwest  Coast  tribes  and  the  peoples 
of  the  islands  and  peninsulas  fringing  northeastern  Asia. 
"Koriak  is  notably  American,"  he  said.17  The  recent  Jesup 
Expedition  to  the  Northwest  Coast  of  America  and  the  nearby 
coast  of  Asia  investigated  the  Koryak,  to  determine  whether 
in  the  past  there  had  been  any  connection  between  the  cultures 
and  ethnic  types  of  the  Old  and  New  World.  These  investi- 
gations have  proved  beyond  doubt  a  kinship  of  culture, 
attributable  either  to  a  remote  common  origin  or  to  former 
contact,  long  and  close,  between  these  isolated  Siberian  tribes 
and  the  American  aborigines.  They  show  that  the  Koryak 
are  one  of  the  Asiatic  tribes  standing  nearest  to  the  north- 
western American  Indian.18  [See  map  page  103.] 

W.  H.  Dall  finds  the  inhabitants  of  the  Pacific  slope  of  Polynesian 
North  America  conspicuously  allied  with  Oceanica  in  cultural  affinities, 
achievements,  whose  origin  he  therefore  assigns  to  that  vast 
congeries  of  islands  stretching  from  Asia  toward  South 
America  in  latitude  25°  south.  These  islands,  closely 
clustered  as  far  as  the  Paumota  group,  straggle  along  with 
widening  spaces  between,  through  Easter  Isle,  which  carries 
the  indestructible  memorials  of  a  strange  civilization,  through 
Sala-y-Gomez,  San  Felix,  and  St.  Ambrose  almost  to  the  thres- 
hold of  the  Peruvian  coast.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  these  islands 
lie  just  outside  the  westward-bearing  Equatorial  Current 
and  trade-winds,  on  the  margin  of  the  South  Pacific  anti- 
cyclonic  winds  and  a  southern  current  which  sets  towards 
the  Peruvian  coast.19  A  more  probable  avenue  for  the  intro- 
duction of  these  Polynesian  or  Malayan  elements  of  culture 
is  found  in  O.  T.  Mason's  theory,  that  primitive  mariners  of 
the  southwestern  Pacific,  led  into  migration  by  the  eternal 
food  quest,  may  have  skirted  the  seaboard  of  East  Asia  and 
Northwest  America,  passing  along  a  great-circle  route 
through  the  succession  of  marginal  seas  and  archipelagoes 
to  various  ports  of  entry  on  the  Pacific  front  of  America. 
Such  a  route,  favored  by  the  prevailing  marine  currents  and 
winds  from  the  southwest,  and  used  repeatedly  during  long 
periods  of  time,  might  have  introduced  trans-Pacific  elements  j^  reaj 
of  race  and  culture  into  the  western  side  of  America.20  Orient  of 

Moreover,    primitive    America    resembled    Oceanica    and  the  world. 


390    CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 


The  Atlan- 
tic abyss 
in  historic 
movements 
of  peoples. 


Races  and 
continents. 


northern  Asia  in  its  ignorance  of  iron,  in  its  Stone  Age  civili- 
zation, and  its  retarded  social  and  political  development. 
Such  affinities  as  it  shows  were  predominantly  Pacific  or 
trans-Pacific."1  On  its  Atlantic  side,  it  stood  out  in  striking 
contrast  to  the  contemporaneous  civilizations  and  races  in 
Europe  and  Africa;  this  was  its  unneighbored  shore,  lying 
on  the  eastern  margin  of  that  broad  zone  of  habitation  which 
stretched  hence  westward  on  and  on  around  the  world,  to  the 
outermost  capes  of  Europe  and  Africa.  The  Atlantic  abyss 
formed  the  single  gap  in  this  encircling  belt  of  population, 
to  which  Columbus  at  last  affixed  the  clasp.  The  Atlantic 
face  of  the  Americas  formed  therefore  the  drowsy  unstirred 
Orient  of  the  inhabited  world,  which  westward  developed  grow- 
ing activity — dreaming  a  civilization  in  Mexico  and  Peru, 
roused  to  artistic  and  maritime  achievement  in  Oceanica  and 
the  Malay  Archipelago,  to  permanent  state-making  and  real 
cultural  development  in  Asia,  and  attaining  the  highest  civili- 
zation at  last  in  western  Europe.  There  was  the  sunset  margin 
of  the  inhabited  world,  the  area  of  achievement,  the  adult 
Occident,  facing  across  the  dividing  ocean  that  infant  Orient 
beyond.  Here  the  Old  World,  the  full-grown  world,  had  ac- 
cumulated in  Columbus'  time  the  matured  forces  of  a  hemi- 
sphere; it  was  searching  for  some  outlet  across  the  shoreless 
distances  of  the  Atlantic,  waiting  for  some  call  from  its  voice- 
less beyond. 

This  deep,  unbridged  chasm  of  the  Atlantic,  closed  only 
four  hundred  years  ago,  must  be  taken  into  account  in  all  in- 
vestigations of  the  geographical  distribution  of  races,  whether 
in  prehistoric  or  historic  times.  The  influences  of  those  ages 
when  it  formed  an  impassable  gulf  are  still  operative  in  direct- 
ing the  movements  of  the  peoples  to-day  inhabiting  its  shores, 
because  that  barrier  maintained  the  continents  of  America 
as  a  vast  territorial  reserve,  sparsely  inhabited  by  a  Stone 
Age  people,  and  affording  a  fresh  field  for  the  superior,  ac- 
cumulated energies  of  Europe. 

Australia  and  the  double  continent  of  America  show 
each  the  coincidence  of  an  ethnic  realm  with  an  isolated 
continent.  In  contrast,  when  we  come  to  the  Old  World  triad 
of  Europe,  Asia  and  Africa,  we  find  three  races,  to  be  sure, 


CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS    391 

but  races  whose  geographical  distribution  ignores  the 
boundaries  of  the  continents.  The  White  race  belongs  to  all 
three,  and  from  time  immemorial  has  made  the  central  basin 
of  the  Mediterranean  the  white  man's  sea.  The  Mongolian, 
though  primarily  at  home  in  Asia,  stretches  along  the  coast 
of  the  Arctic  Ocean  to  the  Atlantic  shores  of  Norway,  and  in 
historical  times  has  penetrated  up  the  Danube  to  the  foot  of 
the  Alps.  Nor  was  the  Negroid  stock  confined  to  Africa, 
though  Africa  has  always  been  its  geographical  core.  The 
Indian  Peninsula  and  Malay  Archipelago,  once  peopled  by  a 
primitive  Negroid  race,  but  now  harboring  only  remnants  of 
them  in  the  Deccan,  Malacca,  the  Philippines  and  elsewhere, 
bridge  the  distance  to  the  other  great  Negroid  center  in 
Melanesia  and  the  derivative  or  secondary  Negroid  area  of 
Australia.22  The  Negroid  race  belongs  essentially  to  the  long 
southern  land  pendants  of  the  Eastern  Hemisphere;  and 
wherever  it  has  bordered  on  the  lighter  northern  stocks,  it 
has  drawn  a  typical  boundary  zone  of  mingled  tints  which 
never  diverges  far  from  the  Equator,  from  the  Atlantic 
shores  of  the  Sudan  to  Pacific  Fiji.23  [See  map  page  105.] 

The  effort  of  the  old  ethnology,  as  represented  by  Blumen- 
bach,  to  make  a  five-fold  division  of  the  races  in  agreement 
with  the  five  continents  was  a  mistake.  To  distinguish  be- 
tween the  continents  is  one  thing  and  to  distinguish  be- 
tween the  races  is  another.  Neither  bio-geography  nor  an- 
thropo-geography  can  adopt  the  continents  as  geographical 
provinces,  although  floras,  faunas  and  races  the  world  over 
give  evidejice  of  partial  or  temporary  restriction  to  a  certain 
continent,  whence  they  have  overflowed  to  other  lands.  A 
ground-plan  for  the  geographical  classification  of  races  is 
to  be  found,  as  Tylor  says,  in  the  fact  that  they  are  not 
found  scattered  indiscriminately  over  the  earth's  surface,  but 
that  certain  races  belong  to  certain  regions,  in  whose  peculiar 
environment  they  have  developed  their  type,  and  whence 
they  have  spread  to  other  lands,  undergoing  modifications  Contrast 

from  race  intermixture  and  successive  changes  of  environment  ° 

„,  northern 

on  the  way.  and  south. 

From  this  general  law  of  race  movements  it  follows  that  ern  conti- 
certain  groups  of  land-masses,  favored  by  location  and  large  nents. 


392    CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 


Isolation 
of  the 
southern 
continents. 


area,  play  a  great  imperial  role,  holding  other  lands  as  ap- 
panages. The  Eastern  Hemisphere,  as  we  have  seen,  enjoys 
this  advantage  over  the  Western.  Still  more  the  Northern 
Hemisphere,  blessed  with  an  abundance  of  land  and  a  pre- 
dominant Temperate  Zone  location,  is  able  to  lord  it  over  the 
Southern,  so  insular  in  its  poverty  of  land.  The  history  of 
the  Northern  Hemisphere  is  marked  by  far-reaching  histori- 
cal influences  and  wide  control;  that  of  the  Southern,  by 
detachment,  aloofness  and  impotence,  due  to  the  small  area 
and  isolation  of  its  land-masses.  A  subordinate  role  is  its 
fate.  Australia  will  always  follow  in  the  train  of  Eurasia, 
whence  alone  it  has  derived  its  incentives  and  means  of  pro- 
gress. Neither  the  southern  half  of  Africa  nor  South  America 
has  ever  in  historical  times  struck  out  a  road  to  advancement 
unaided  by  its  northern  neighbors.  Primitive  South  America 
developed  the  only  independent  civilization  that  ever  blos- 
somed in  the  Southern  Hemisphere,  but  the  Peruvian  achieve- 
ments in  progress  were  inferior  to  those  of  Mexico  and  Central 
America.25 

This  subordination  of  the  southern  continents  is  partly 
due  to  the  fact  that  they  have  only  one  side  of  contact  or 
neighborhood  with  any  other  land,  that  is,  on  the  north ;  yet 
even  here  the  contact  is  not  close.  In  Australia  the  medium 
of  communication  is  a  long  bridge  of  islands;  in  America, 
a  winding  island  chain  and  a  mountainous  isthmus ;  in  Africa, 
a  broad  zone  of  desert  dividing  the  Mediterranean  or  Eura- 
sian from  the  tropical  and  Negroid  part  of  the  continent. 
Intercourse  was  not  easy,  and  produced  clear  effects  only  in 
the  case  of  Africa.  Enlightenment  filtering  in  here  was 
sadly  dimmed  as  it  spread.  Moreover  it  was  delayed  till  the 
introduction  from  Asia  of  the  horse  and  camel,  which  were  not 
native  to  Africa,  and  which,  as  Ratzel  points  out,  alone  made 
possible  the  long  journey  across  the  Sahara.  The  opposite  or 
peninsular  sides,  running  out  as  great  spurs  from  the  com- 
pactor land-masses  of  the  north,  look  southward  into  vacant 
wastes  of  water,  find  no  neighbors  in  those  Antarctic  seas. 
Owing  to  this  unfavorable  location  on  the  edge  of  things,  they 
were  historically  dead  until  four  centuries  a^o,  when  oceanic 
navigation  opened  up  the  great  sea  route  of  the  Southern 


CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS    393 

Hemisphere,  and  for  the  first  time  included  them  in  the  world's 
circle  of  communication.  But  even  when  lifted  by  the  ensuing 
Europeanizing  process,  they  only  emphasize  the  fundamental 
dependence  of  the  Southern  Hemisphere  upon  the  superior 
geographical  endowments  of  the  Northern. 

The  build  of  the  land-masses  influences  fundamentally  the  Effect  of 
movements  and  hence  the  development  of  the  races  who  in-  continental 
habit  them.     A  simple  continental  structure  gives  to  those  .. 

movements  a  few  simple  features  and  a  wide  monotonous  dis-  torical  de- 
tribution  which  checks  differentiation.  A  manifold,  complex  velopment. 
build,  varied  in  relief  and  ragged  in  contour,  breaks  up  the 
moving  streams  of  peoples,  turns  each  branch  into  a  different 
channel,  lends  it  a  distinctive  character  through  isolation, 
finally  brings  it  up  in  a  cvl  de  sac  formed  by  a  peninsula  or 
mountain-rimmed  basin,  where  further  movement  is  checked 
and  the  process  of  local  individualization  begins.  Therefore 
great  simplicity  of  continental  build  may  result  in  historical 
poverty,  as  in  the  flat  quadrangle  of  European  Russia,  the 
level  plateau  of  Africa,  and  the  smooth  Atlantic  slope  of 
North  America,  with  its  neatly  trimmed  outline.  Complexity, 
abounding  in  contrasted  environments,  tends  to  produce  a 
varied  wealth  of  historical  development.  Africa  lies  on  the 
surface  of  the  ocean,  a  huge  torso  of  a  continent,  headless, 
memberless,  inert.  Here  is  no  diversity  of  outward  form, 
no  contrast  of  zonal  location,  no  fructifying  variety  of 
geographic  conditions.  Humanity  has  forgotten  to  grow  in 
its  stationary  soil.  Only  where  the  Suez  Isthmus  formed  an 
umbilical  cord  uniting  ancient  Egypt  to  the  mother  continent 
of  Asia  was  Africa  vitalized  by  the  pulse  of  another  life. 
European  influences  penetrated  little  beyond  the  northern 
coast. 

Asia,  on  the  other  hand,  radiating  great  peninsulas,  fes- 
tooned with  islands,  supporting  the  vast  corrugations  of  its 
highlands  and  lowlands,  its  snow-capped  mountains  and 
steaming  valleys,  stretching  from  the  Equator  through  all 
the  zones  to  the  ice-blocked  shores  of  the  Arctic,  knowing 
drought  and  deluge,  tundra  waste  and  teeming  jungle,  has 
offered  the  manifold  environment  and  segregated  areas  for 
individualized  civilizations,  which  have  produced  such  far- 


394    CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 


Structure 
of  North 
and  South 
America. 


reaching  historical  results.  The  same  fact  is  true  of  Europe, 
and  that  in  an  intensified  degree.  Here  a  complex  develop- 
ment of  mountains  and  highlands  built  on  diverse  axes,  penin- 
sulas which  comprise  27  per  cent,  and  islands  which  comprise 
nearly  8  per  cent,  of  the  total  area,26  vast  thalassic  inlets 
cleaving  the  continent  to  the  core,  have  provided  an 
abundance  of  those  naturally  defined  regions  which  serve  as 
cradles  of  civilization  and,  reacting  upon  the  continent  as 
a  whole,  endow  it  with  lasting  historical  significance.27  Even 
Strabo  saw  this.  He  begins  his  description  of  the  inhabited 
world  with  Europe,  because,  as  he  says,  it  has  such  a  "poly- 
morphous formation"  and  is  the  region  most  favorable  to  the 
mental  and  social  ennoblement  of  man.28 

In  North  and  South  America,  great  simplicity  of  conti- 
nental build  gave  rise  to  a  corresponding  simplicity  of  native 
ethnic  and  cultural  condition.  There  is  only  one  marked 
contrast  throughout  the  length  of  this  double  conti- 
nent, that  between  its  Atlantic  and  Pacific  slopes.  On  the 
Atlantic  side  of  the  Cordilleras,  a  vast  trough  extends 
through  both  land-masses  from  the  Arctic  Ocean  to  Pata- 
gonia; this  has  given  to  migration  in  each  a  longitudinal 
direction  and  therefore  constantly  tended  to  -nullify  the 
diversities  arising  from  contrasted  zonal  conditions.  On  the 
Pacific  side  of  North  America,  there  has  been  an  unmistake- 
able  migration  southward  along  the  accessible  coast  from 
Alaska  to  the  Columbia  River,  and  down  the  great  intermon- 
tane  valleys  of  the  western  highlands  from  the  Great  Basin  to 
Honduras  ;29  while  South  America  shows  the  same  meridional 
movement  for  2,000  miles  along  the  Pacific  coast  and  longi- 
tudinal valleys  of  the  Andes  system.  There  was  little  en- 
couragement to  cut  across  the  grain  of  the  continents.  The 
eastern  range  of  the  Cordilleras  drew  in  general  a  dividing 
line  between  the  eastern  and  western  tribes.80  Though 
Athapascans  from  the  east  overstepped  it  at  a  few  points  in 
North  America,  the  Great  Divide  has  served  effectually  to  iso- 
late the  two  groups  from  one  another  and  to  draw  that  line 
of  linguistic  cleavage  which  Major  Powell  has  set  down  in 
his  map  of  Indian  linguistic  stocks.  Consequently,  Ameri- 
canists recognize  a  distinct  resemblance  among  the  members 


CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS    395 

of  the  North  Atlantic  group  of  Indians,  as  among  those  of  the 
South  Atlantic  group ;  but  they  note  an  equally  distinct  con- 
trast between  each  of  them  and  its  corresponding  Pacific  group. 
Nor  is  this  contrast  superficial ;  it  extends  to  physical  traits, 
temperament  and  culture,31  and  appears  in  the  use  of  the 
vigesimal  system  of  enumeration  in  primitive  Mexico,  Central 
America,  among  the  Tlingits  of  the  Northwest  coast  and  the 
Eskimo  as  also  among  the  Chukches  and  Ainus  of  Asia,  while 
in  the  Atlantic  section  of  North  America  the  decimal  system, 
with  one  doubtful  exception,  was  alone  in  use.32 

To  the  anthropo-geographer,  the  significant  fact  is  that  Cultural 
all  the  higher  phases  of  native  civilization  are  confined  to  superiority 
the  Pacific  slope  group  of  Indians,  which  includes  the  Mexi-  Pacific 
can  and  Isthmian  tribes.  From  the  elongated  center  of  Hjj 
advanced  culture  stretching  from  the  Bolivian  highlands 
northward  to  the  Anahuac  Plateau,  the  same  type  shades 
off  by  easy  transitions  through  northern  Mexico  and  the 
Pueblo  country,  vanishes  among  the  lower  intrusive  stocks 
of  Oregon  and  California,  only  to  reappear  among 
the  Haidas  and  Tlingits  of  British  Columbia  and  Alaska, 
whose  cultural  achievements  show  affinity  to  those  of  the 
Mayas  in  Yucatan.33  Dall  found  certain  distinguishing 
customs  or  characteristics  spread  north  and  south  along  the 
western  slope  of  the  continent  in  a  natural  geographical 
line  of  migration.  They  included  labretifery,  tattooing  the 
chin  of  adult  women,  certain  uses  of  masks,  a  certain  style 
of  conventionalizing  natural  objects,  the  use  of  conventional 
signs  as  hieroglyphics,  a  peculiar  facility  in  carving  wood 
and  stone,  a  similarit}^  of  angular  designs  on  their  pottery 
and  basketry,  and  of  artistic  representations  connected  with 
their  common  religious  or  mythological  ideas.  Many  singu- 
lar forms  of  carvings  and  the  method  of  superimposing 
figures  of  animals  one  upon  another  in  their  totem  poles  are 
found  from  Alaska  to  Panama,  except  in  California.  These 
distinguishing  features  of  an  incipient  culture  are  found 
nowhere  else  in  North  America,  even  sporadically.  Dall 
therefore  concludes  that  "they  have  been  impressed  upon  the 
American  aboriginal  world  from  without,"  and  on  the  ground 
of  affinities,  attributes  their  origin  to  Oceanica.34 


396    CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 


Lack  of 

segregated 

districts. 


Coast  artic- 
ulations 
of  conti- 
nents. 


Cyrus  Thomas,  on  the  basis  of  the  character  and  dis- 
tribution of  the  archeological  remains  in  North  America, 
concurs  in  this  opinion.  He  finds  that  these  remains  fall 
into  two  classes,  one  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  watershed 
and  the  other  west.  "When  those  of  the  Pacific  slope  as  a 
whole  are  compared  with  those  of  the  Atlantic  slope,  there 
is  a  dissimilarity  which  marks  them  as  the  products  of  dif- 
ferent races  or  as  the  result  of  different  race  influences." 
He  emphasizes  the  resemblance  of  the  customs,  arts  and 
archeological  remains  of  the  west  coast  to  those  of  the  op- 
posite shores  and  islands  of  the  Pacific,  and  notes  the  lack 
of  any  resemblance  to  those  of  the  Atlantic ;  and  finally  leans 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  continent  was  peopled  from  two 
sources,  one  incoming  stream  distributing  itself  over  the  At- 
lantic slope,  and  the  other  over  the  Pacific,  the  two  becoming 
gradually  fused  into  a  comparatively  homogeneous  race  by 
long  continental  isolation.  Yet  these  two  sources  may  not 
necessarily  include  a  trans-Atlantic  origin  for  one  of  the 
contributing  streams;  ethnic  evidence  is  against  such  a  sup- 
position, because  the  characteristics  of  the  American  race 
and  of  the  archeological  remains  point  exclusively  to  affinity 
with  the  people  of  the  Pacific.35  John  Edward  Payne  also 
reaches  the  same  conclusion,  though  on  other  grounds.38 

The  one  strong  segregating  feature  in  primitive  America 
was  the  Cordilleras,  which  held  east  and  west  apart.  In  the 
natural  pockets  formed  by  the  high  intermontane  valleys 
of  the  Andes  and  the  Anahuac  Plateau,  and  in  the  constricted 
isthmian  region,  the  continent  afforded  a  few  secluded 
localities  where  civilization  found  favorable  conditions  of 
development.  But  in  general,  the  paucity  of  large  coast 
articulations,  and  the  adverse  polar  or  subpolar  location  of 
most  of  these,  the  situation  of  the  large  tropical  islands 
along  that  barren  Atlantic  abyss,  and  the  lack  of  a  broken 
or  varied  relief,  have  prevented  the  Americas  from  developing 
numerous  local  centers  of  civilization,  which  might  eventually 
have  lifted  the  cultural  status  of  the  continents.87 

It  is  necessary  to  distinguish  two  general  classes  of  con- 
tinental articulations ;  first,  marginal  dependences,  like  the 
fringe  of  European  peninsulas  and  islands,  resulting  from  a 


CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS    397 

deeply  serrated  contour;  and  second,  surface  subdivisions 
of  the  interior,  resulting  from  differences  of  relief  or  de- 
fined often  by  enclosing  mountains  or  deserts,  like  the  Tibetan 
Plateau,  the  Basin  of  Bohemia,  the  Po  River  trough,  or  the 
Band-rimmed  valley  of  the  Nile.  The  first  class  is  by  far 
the  more  important,  because  of  the  intense  historical  activity 
which  results  from  the  vitalizing  contact  with  the  sea.  But 
in  considering  coast  articulations,  anthropo-geography  is 
led  astray  unless  it  discriminates  between  these  on  the  basis 
of  size  and  location.  Without  stopping  to  discuss  the  obvious 
results  of  a  contrasted  zonal  location,  such  as  that  between 
Labrador  and  Yucatan,  the  Kola  Peninsula  and  Spain,  it 
is  necessary  to  keep  in  mind  always  the  effect  of  vicinal 
location.  An  outlying  coastal  dependency  like  Ireland  has 
had  its  history  impoverished  by  excessive  isolation,  in  con- 
trast to  the  richer  development  of  England,  Jutland,  and 
Zealand  in  the  same  latitude,  because  these  have  profited 
from  the  closer  neighborhood  of  other  peripheral  regions. 
So  from  ancient  times,  Greece  has  had  a  similar  advantage 
over  the  Crimea,  the  Tunisian  Peninsula  of  North  Africa 
over  Spain,  the  Cotentin  Peninsula  of  France  over  Brittany, 
and  Kent  over  Cornwall  or  Caithness  in  Great  Britain. 

Articulations  on  a  vast  scale,  like  the  southern  peninsulas  Importance 
of  Asia,  produce  quite  different  cultural  and  historical  effects  °*  8^e  "* 
from  small  physical  sub-divisions,  like  the  fiord  promontories  c 
and  "skerries"  of  Norway  and  southern  Alaska,  or  the  finger 
peninsulas  of  the  Peloponnesus.  The  significant  difference 
lies  in  the  degree  of  isolation  which  the  two  types  yield. 
Large  continental  dependencies  of  the  Asiatic  class  resemble 
small  continents  in  their  power  to  segregate;  while  over- 
grown capes  like  ancient  Attica  and  Argolis  or  the  more 
bulky  Peloponnesus  have  their  exclusiveness  tempered  by  the 
mediating  power  of  the  small  marine  inlets  between  them. 
Small  articulations,  by  making  a  coast  accessible,  tend  to 
counteract  the  excessive  isolation  of  a  large  articulation. 
They  themselves  develop  in  their  people  only  minor  or  inner 
differentiations,  which  serve  to  enrich  the  life  of  the  island 
or  peninsula  as  a  whole,  but  do  not  invade  its  essential  unity. 
The  contrast  in  the  history  of  Hellas  and  the  Peloponnesus 


Historical 
contrast 
of  large 
and  small 
peninsulas. 


was  due  largely  to  their  separation  from  one  another;  yet 
neither  was  able  to  make  of  its  people  anything  but  Greeks. 
Wales  and  Cornwall  show  in  English  history  the  same  contrast 
and  the  same  underlying  unity. 

In  discussing  continental  articulations,  therefore,  it  makes 
a  great  difference  whether  we  draw  our  deductions  from  small 
projections  of  the  coast,  like  Wales,  the  Peloponnesus,  Brit- 
tany and  the  Crimea,  whose  areas  range  from  7442  to 
10,023  square  miles  (19,082  to  25,700  square  kilometers); 
or  the  four  Mediterranean  peninsulas,  which  range  in  size 
from  the  58,110  square  miles  (149,000  square  kilometers) 
of  the  Apennine  Peninsula  to  the  197,600  square  miles  (506,- 
600  square  kilometers)  of  Asia  Minor  and  the  227,700  square 
miles  (584,000  square  kilometers)  of  the  Iberian;  or  the 
vast  continental  alcoves  of  southern  Asia,  like  Farther  India 
with  its  650,000  square  miles  (1,667,000  square  kilometers), 
Hither  India  with  814,320  square  miles  (2,088,000  square 
kilometers)  and  Arabia  with  1,064,700  square  miles  (2,730,- 
000  square  kilometers).38  The  fact  that  the  large  compound 
peninsula  of  western  Europe  which  comprises  Spain,  Portu- 
gal, France,  Jutland,  Belgium,  Holland,  Switzerland,  Italy 
and  western  Germany,  and  has  its  base  in  the  stricture 
between  the  Adriatic  and  the  Baltic,  is  about  the  size  of 
peninsular  India,  suggests  how  profound  may  be  the  difference 
in  geographic  effects  between  large  and  small  peripheral 
divisions.  The  three  huge  extremities  which  Asia  thrusts 
forward  into  the  Indian  Ocean  are  geographical  entities, 
which  in  point  of  size  and  individualization  rank  just  below 
the  continents ;  and  in  relation  to  the  solid  mass  of  Central 
Asia,  they  have  exhibited  in  many  respects  an  aloofness  and 
self-sufficiency,  that  have  resulted  in  an  historical  divergence 
approximating  that  of  the  several  continents.  India,  which 
has  more  productive  territory  than  Australia  and  a  popula- 
tion not  much  smaller  than  that  of  Europe,  becomes  to  the 
administrators  of  its  government  "the  Continent  of  India," 
as  it  is  regularly  termed  in  the  Statistical  Atlas  published  at 
Calcutta.  Farther  India  has  in  the  long-drawn  pendant  of 
Malacca  a  sub-peninsula  half  as  large  again  as  Italy.  The 
Deccan  has  in  Ceylon  an  insular  dependency  the  size  of  Tas- 


CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS    399 

mania.  The  whole  scale  is  continental.  It  appears  again  some- 
what diminished,  in  the  largest  articulations  of  Europe, 
in  Scandinavia,  the  British  Isles,  the  Iberian  and  Balkan  penin- 
sulas. This  continental  scale  stamps  also  the  anthropo- 
geography  of  such  large  individualized  fields.  They  are  big 
enough  for  each  to  comprise  one  or  even  several  nations,  and 
isolated  enough  to  keep  their  historical  processes  for  long 
periods  at  a  time  to  a  certain  extent  detached  from  those  of 
their  respective  continents. 

The  most  favorable  conditions  for  historical  development 
obtain   where  the  two   classes   of  marginal   articulation   are  conditions 
combined,  and  where  they  occur  in  groups,  as  we  find  them  in  most  favor- 
the  Mediterranean  and  the  North  Sea-Baltic  basin.    Here  the  able  to  ^B~ 
smaller  indentations  multiply  contact  with  the  sea,  and  pro- 
vide the  harbors,  bays  and  breakwaters  of  capes  and  prom- 
ontories   which    make    the    coast    accessible.       The    larger 
articulations,  by  their  close  grouping,  break  up  the  sea  into 
the  minor  thalassic  basins  which  encourage  navigation,  and 
thus  insure  the  exchange  of  their  respective  cultural  achieve- 
ments.     In   other  words,   such   conditions   present   the   pre- 
eminent advantages  of  vicinal  location  around  an  enclosed 
sea. 

The  enormous  articulations  of  southern  Asia  suffer  from 
their  paucity  of  small  indentations,  all  the  more  because  of 
their  vast  size  and  sub-tropical  location.  The  Grecian  type 
of  peninsula,  with  its  broken  shoreline,  finds  here  its  large- 
scale  homologue  only  in  Farther  India,  to  which  the  Sunda 
Islands  have  played  in  history  the  part  of  a  gigantic 
Cyclades.  The  European  type  of  articulation  is  found  only 
about  the  Yellow-Japan  Sea,  where  the  island  of  Hondo  and 
the  peninsulas  of  Shangtung  and  Korea  reproduce  approxi- 
mately the  proportions  of  Great  Britain,  Jutland  and  Italy 
respectively.  Arabia  and  India,  like  the  angular  shoulder 
of  Africa  which  protrudes  into  the  Indian  Ocean,  measure 
an  imposing  length  of  coastline,  but  this  length  shrinks  in 
comparison  with  the  vast  area  of  the  peninsulas.  The  con- 
tour of  a  peninsula  is  like  the  surface  of  the  brain :  in  both 
it  is  convolutions  that  count.  Southern  Asia  has  had 
lobes  enough  but  too  few  convolutions.  For  this  reason,  the 


400    CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 


Length  of 
coastline. 


The  con- 
tinental 
base  of 

peninsulas. 


northern  Indian  Ocean,  despite  its  exceptional  location  as 
the  eastward  extension  of  the  Mediterranean  route  to  the 
Orient,  found  its  development  constantly  arrested  till  the 
advent  of  European  navigators. 

Although  the  peripheral  articulations  of  a  continent  differ 
anthropo-geographically  according  to  their  size,  their  zonal 
and  vicinal  location,  yet  large  and  small,  arctic  and  tropical, 
are  grouped  indiscriminately  together  in  the  figures  that 
state  the  length  of  coastlines.  For  this  reason,  statistics  of 
continental  coastlines  have  little  value.  For  instance,  the 
fact  that  Eurasia  has  67,000  miles  (108,000  kilometers)  and 
North  America  46,500  miles  (75,000  kilometers)  of  contact 
with  the  ocean  is  not  illuminating ;  these  figures  do  not  reveal 
the  fact  that  the  former  has  its  greatest  coastal  length  on 
its  tropical  and  sub-tropical  side,  while  the  latter  continent 
has  wasted  inlets  and  islands  innumerable  in  the  long,  bleak 
stretch  from  Newfoundland  poleward  around  to  Bering  Sea. 

Peninsulas  are  accessible  from  the  sea  according  to  the 
configuration  of  their  coasts,  but  from  their  hinterland, 
according  to  the  length  and  nature  of  their  connection  with 
the  same.  This  determines  the  degree  of  their  isolation  from 
the  land-mass.  If  they  hang  from  the  continent  by  a  frayed 
string,  as  does  the  Peloponnesus,  Crimea,  Malacca, 
Indian  Gutjerat,  and  Nova  Scotia,  they  are  segregated 
from  the  life  of  the  mainland  almost  as  completely  as  if  they 
were  islands.  The  same  effects  follow  where  the  base  of  a 
peninsula  is  defined  by  a  high  mountain  barrier,  as  in  all 
the  Mediterranean  peninsulas,  in  the  two  Indias,  and  in 
Korea;  or  by  a  desert  like  that  which  scantily  links  Arabia 
to  Egypt,  Syria  and  Mesopotamia ;  or  by  a  blur  of  swamps 
and  lakes  such  as  half  detaches  Scandinavia,  Courland,  Est- 
land  and  Finland  from  Russia. 

Held  to  their  continents  by  bonds  that  often  fail  to  bind, 
subjected  by  their  outward-facing  peripheral  location  to 
every  centrifugal  force,  feeling  only  slightly  the  pull  of 
the  great  central  mass  behind,  peninsulas  are  often  further 
detached  economically  and  historically  by  their  own  contrasted 
local  conditions.  A  sharp  transition  in  geological  formation 
and  therefore  in  soil,  a  difference  of  climate,  rainfall,  drainage 


CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS    401 

system,  of  flora  or  fauna,  serve  greatly  to  emphasize  the  lack 
of  community  of  interests  with  the  continental  interior,  and 
therefore  produce  an  inevitable  diversity  of  historical  develop- 
ment.39 Hence,  many  peninsulas  insulate  their  people  as  com- 
pletely as  islands.  It  is  hard  to  say  whether  the  Pyrenean 
peninsula  or  Sicily,  Scandinavia  or  Great  Britain,  has  held 
itself  more  aloof  from  the  political  history  of  remaining 
Europe ;  whether  Korea  is  not  more  entitled  to  its  name  of  the 
Hermit  Kingdom  than  island  Japan  could  ever  be;  whether 
the  Peloponnesus  or  Euboea  was  more  intimately  associated 
with  the  radiant  life  of  ancient  Hellas.  These  questions  lead 
to  another,  namely,  whether  a  high  mountain  wall  like  the 
Pyrenees,  or  a  narrow  strait  like  that  of  Messina  is  the  more 
effective  geographical  boundary. 

Peninsulas  not  infrequently  gain  in  breadth  as  they  ap-  Continental 
proach  the  continent ;  here  they  tend  to  abate  their  distinctive  base  a 

character  as  lobes  of  the  mainland,  together  with  the  ethnic  Z( 

transition, 
and  historical  marks  of  isolation.    Here  they  form  a  doubtful 

boundary  zone  of  mingled  continental  and  peninsular  develop- 
ment. Such  peninsulas  fall  naturally,  therefore,  into  a 
continental  and  a  peninsular  section,  and  reveal  this  seg- 
mentation in  the  differentiated  history  of  the  two  portions. 
That  great  military  geographer  Napoleon  distinguished  the 
Italy  of  the  Po  basin  as  Italic  continentale,  and  the  Apen- 
nine  section  as  Presqu'ile.  Not  only  is  the  former  broader, 
but,  expanding  like  a  tree  trunk  near  the  ground,  it  sends  its 
roots  well  back  into  the  massive  interior  of  the  continent; 
it  is  dominated  more  by  the  Alps  than  by  the  Apennines ;  it 
contains  a  lowland  and  a  river  of  continental  proportions, 
for  which  there  is  no  space  on  the  long,  narrow  spur  of 
southern  Italy.  If  its  geographical  character  approximates 
that  of  the  mainland,  so  does  its  ethnic  and  historical.  The 
Po  basin  is  a  well  defined  area  of  race  characterization,  in 
which  influences  have  made  for  intermixture.  South  of  the 
crest  of  the  Apennines  the  Italian  language  in  its  purity 
begins,  in  contrast  to  the  Gallo-Italian  of  the  north.  This 
mountain  ridge  has  also  held  apart  the  dark,  short  dolicho- 
cephalic stock  of  the  Mediterranean  race  from  the  fairer, 
taller,  broad-headed  Celts,  who  have  moved  down  into  the 


402    CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 


Historical 
contrast 
between 
base  and 
extremity. 


Po  basin  from  the  Alps,  and  the  Germans  and  Illyrians  who 
have  entered  it  from  the  northeast.40  Northern  Italy  is 
therefore  allied  ethnically,  as  it  has  often  been  united  politi- 
cally, to  the  neighboring  countries  abutting  upon  the  Alps, 
so  that  it  has  experienced  only  in  a  partial  degree  that  de- 
tachment which  has  stamped  the  history  of  the  Apennine 
section. 

The  Balkan  Peninsula  tells  much  the  same  story  of  con- 
trasted geographic  conditions  and  development  in  its  conti- 
nental and  peninsular  sections.  Greece  proper,  in  ancient 
as  in  modern  times,  reached  its  northern  confines  where  the 
peninsula  suddenly  widens  its  base  through  Macedonia  and 
Thrace.  In  this  narrow  southern  section  to-day,  especially 
in  isolated  Peloponnesus,  Attica,  and  the  high-walled  garden 
of  Thessaly,  are  found  people  of  the  pure,  long-headed,  Hel- 
lenic type,  and  here  the  Greek  language  prevails.41  But 
that  broad  and  alien  north,  long  excluded  from  the  Am- 
phictyonic  Council  and  a  stranger  to  Aegean  culture  in 
classical  times,  is  occupied  to-day  by  a  congeries  of  Slavs, 
who  form  a  southwestern  spur  of  the  Slav  stock  covering 
eastern  Europe.  Its  political  history  shows  how  often  it  has 
been  made  a  Danubian  or  continental  state, — by  Alexander 
of  Macedon,  by  the  Romans,  Bulgarians,  and  Ottoman 
Turks,42  as  it  may  be  some  day  by  Russia ;  and  also  how  often 
its  large  and  compact  form  has  enabled  it  to  dominate  the 
tapering  peninsular  section  to  the  south. 

In  the  same  way,  the  vast  Ganges  and  Indus  basins,  which 
constitute  the  continental  portion  of  India,  have  received 
various  Tibetan,  Scythian,  Aryan,  Pathan,  and  Mongol- 
Tartar  ingredients  from  Central  Asia;  and  by  reason  of  the 
dense  populations  supported  by  these  fruitful  river  plains, 
it  has  been  able  to  dominate  politically,  religiously  and 
culturally  the  protruding  triangle  of  the  Deccan.  [See  maps 
pages  8  and  102.]  The  continental  side  of  Arabia,  the  Meso- 
potamian  valley  which  ties  the  peninsula  to  the  highlands  of 
Persia  and  Armenia,  has  received  into  its  Semitic  stock  con- 
stant infiltrations  of  Turanian  and  Aryan  peoples  from  the 
core  of  Asia.  This  process  has  been  going  on  from  the 
ancient  Elamite  and  Persian  conquests  of  Mesopotamia  down 


CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS    403 

to  the  Ottoman  invasion  and  the  present  periodic  visits  of 
Kurdish  shepherds  to  the  pastures  of  the  upper  Tigris.43  Here 
we  have  the  same  contrast  of  geographic  conditions  as  in 
Italy  and  India,  a  wide,  populous  alluvial  plain  occupying 
the  continental  section  of  the  peninsula,  and  a  less  attractive 
highland  or  mountainous  region  in  the  outlying  spur  of  land. 

These    continental    sections    of   peninsulas   become    there-  Continental 
fore  strongly  marked  as  areas  of  ethnic  characterization  and  °ase  a 

differentiated  historical  development.     Their  threshold  loca-  .c 

invasion 
tion,  by  reason  of  which  they  first  catch  any  outward  migra-  and  wan 

tion  from  the  core  of  the  continent,  and  their  fertility,  which 
serves  as  a  perennial  lure  to  new  comers,  whether  peaceful  or 
warlike,  combine  to  give  them  intense  historical  activity. 
They  catch  the  come  and  go  between  their  wide  hinterland 
and  the  projection  of  land  beyond,  the  stimulus  of  new 
arrivals  and  fresh  blood.  But  tragedy  too  is  theirs.  The 
Po  Valley  has  been  called  "the  cockpit  of  Europe."  Even  the 
little  Eider,  which  marks  the  base  of  Jutland,  has  been 
the  scene  of  war  between  Danes  and  Germans  since  the  tenth 
century.44  The  Indus  Valley  has  again  and  again  felt  the 
shock  of  conflict  with  invading  hordes  from  the  central  high- 
lands, and  witnessed  the  establishment  of  a  succession  of 
empires.  Peace  at  the  gates  of  the  Balkan  Peninsula  has 
never  been  of  long  duration,  and  the  postern  door  of  Korea 
has  been  stormed  often  enough. 

In  contrast  to  these  continental  sections  which  stand  in  Peninsular 

contact  with  the  solid  land-mass  behind,  the  extremities  of  e 

.  .  as  areas  of 

the  peninsulas  are  areas  of  isolation  and  therefore  generally  isolation. 

of  ethnic  unity.  They  often  represent  the  last  stand  of 
displaced  people  pressed  outward  into  these  narrow  quarters 
by  expanding  races  in  their  rear.  The  vast  triangle  of  the 
Deccan,  which  forms  the  essentially  peninsular  part  of  India, 
is  occupied,  except  in  the  more  exposed  northwest  corner, 
by  the  Dravidian  race  which  once  occupied  all  India,  and 
afterward  was  pushed  southward  by  the  influx  of  more 
energetic  peoples.45  Here  they  have  preserved  their  speech 
and  nationality  unmixed  and  live  in  almost  primitive  sim- 
plicity.48 In  the  peninsular  parts  of  Great  Britain,  in 
northern  Scotland,  Wales  and  Cornwall,  we  find  people  of 


404    CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 


Ethnic 
unity  of 
peninsulas. 


Peninsulas 
as  inter- 
mediaries. 


Celtic  speech  brought  to  bay  on  these  remote  spurs  of  the 
land,  affiliating  little  with  the  varied  folk  which  occupied 
the  continental  side  of  the  island,  and  resisting  conquest  to 
the  last.47  The  mountainous  peninsula  of  western  Connaught 
in  Ireland  has  been  the  rocky  nucleus  of  the  largest  Celtic- 
speaking  community  in  the  island.48  Brittany,  with  a  similar 
location,  became  the  last  refuge  of  Celtic  speech  on  the  main- 
land of  Europe,49  the  seat  of  resistance  to  Norman  and  later 
to  English  conquest,  finally  the  stronghold  of  conservatism 
in  the  French  Revolution. 

The  northern  wall  of  the  Apennines  and  the  outpost  bar- 
rier of  the  Alps  have  combined  to  protect  peninsular  Italy 
from  extensive  ethnic  infusions  from  the  direction  of  the 
continent.  This  portion  of  the  country  shows  therefore,  as 
the  anthropological  maps  attest,  a  striking  uniformity  of 
race.  It  has  been  a  melting-pot  in  which  foreign  elements, 
filtering  through  the  breaches  of  the  Apennines  or  along  the 
southern  coast,  have  been  fused  into  the  general  population 
under  the  isolating  and  cohesive  influences  of  a  peninsular 
environment.50  The  population  of  the  Iberian  Peninsula  is 
even  more  unified,  probably  the  most  homogeneous  in  Europe. 
Here  the  long-headed  Mediterranean  race  is  found  in  the 
same  purity  as  in  island  Corsica  and  Sardinia.51  Spain's 
short  line  of  contact  with  France  and  its  sharp  separation 
by  the  unbroken  wall  of  the  Pyrenees  robs  the  peninsula  of 
any  distinctly  continental  section,  and  consequently  of  any 
transitional  area  of  race  and  culture;  hence  the  unity  of 
Spain  as  opposed  to  that  twofold  balanced  diversity  which 
we  find  in  Italy  and  India.  The  Balkan  Peninsula,  on  the 
other  hand,  owing  to  the  great  predominance  of  its  conti- 
nental section  and  the  confused  relief  of  the  country,  has 
not  protected  its  distinctively  peninsular  or  Greek  section 
from  the  southward  migrations  of  Slavs,  Albanians,  Wal- 
lachians,  and  other  continental  peoples.52  It  has  been  like 
a  big  funnel  with  a  small  mouth;  the  pressure  from  above 
has  been  very  great.  Hellas  and  even  the  Peloponnesus 
have  had  their  peninsularity  impaired  and  their  race  mixed, 
owing  to  the  predominant  continental  section  to  the  north. 

Peninsulas,  so  far  as  they  project  from  their  continents, 


are  areas  of  isolation ;  but  so  far  as  they  extend  also  toward 
some  land  beyond,  they  become  intermediaries.  The  isolating 
and  intermediary  aspects  can  be  traced  in  the  anthropo-geo- 
graphical  effects  of  every  peninsula,  even  those  which,  like 
Brittany  and  Cornwall,  project  into  the  long  uncharted 
waste  of  the  Atlantic.  In  the  order  of  historical  develop- 
ment, a  peninsula  first  isolates,  until  in  its  secluded  environ- 
ment it  has  molded  a  mature,  independent  people;  then,  as 
that  people  outgrows  its  narrow  territory,  the  peninsula 
becomes  a  favorable  base  for  maritime  expansion  to  distant 
lands,  or  becomes  a  natural  avenue  for  numerous  reciprocal 
relations  with  neighboring  lands  beyond.  Korea  was  the 
bridge  for  Mongolian  migration  from  continental  Asia  to 
the  Japan  islands,  and  for  the  passage  thither  of  Chinese 
culture,  whether  intellectual,  esthetic,  industrial  or  re- 
ligious.53 It  has  been  the  one  country  conspicuous  in  the 
foreign  history  of  Japan.  Conquered  by  the  island  empire 
in  1592,  it  paid  tribute  for  nearly  three  centuries  and  yielded 
to  its  foreign  master  the  southeastern  port  of  Fusan,  the 
Calais  of  Korea.54  Since  the  treaty  of  Portsmouth  in  1905 
made  it  subject  to  Japan,  it  has  become  the  avenue  of 
Japanese  expansion  to  the  mainland  and  the  unwilling  re- 
cipient of  the  modern  civilization  thrust  upon  it  by  these 
English  of  the  East.  In  like  manner  the  Pyrenean  penin- 
sula has  always  been  the  intermediary  between  Europe  and 
northwest  Africa.  Its  population,  as  well  as  its  flora  and 
fauna,  group  with  those  of  the  southern  continent.  It  has 
served  as  transit  land  between  north  and  south  for  the 
Carthaginians,  Vandals  and  Saracens ;  and  in  modern  times 
it  has  maintained  its  character  as  a  link  by  the  Portuguese 
occupation  of  the  Tangiers  peninsula  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury,55 and  the  Spanish  possession  of  Ceuta  and  various  other 
points  along  the  Moroccan  coast  from  the  year  709  A.  D.  to 
the  present.56 

This   role   of   intermediary   is  inevitably   thrust   upon   all  Peninsulas 
peninsulas    which,    like    Spain,    Italy,    Greece,    Asia    Minor,  °*  inter~ 

Arabia,  Farther  India,  Malacca,  Chukchian  Siberia,  and  Al-  . 

location, 
aska,  occupy  an  intercontinental  location.     Arabia  especially 

in  its  climate,  flora,  races  and  history  shows  the  haul  and 


406    CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 


Atlantic 
peninsulas 
of  Europe. 


pull  now  of  Asia,  now  of  Africa.  From  it  Asiatic  influences 
have  spread  over  Africa  to  Morocco  and  the  Niger  River  on 
the  west,  and  to  Zanzibar  on  the  south,  permeated  Abyssinia, 
and  penetrated  to  the  great  Equatorial  Lakes,  whether  in  the 
form  of  that  Mecca-born  worship  of  Allah,  or  the  creeping 
caravans  and  slave-gangs  of  Arab  trader.  Of  all  such  inter- 
continental peninsulas,  Florida  alone  seems  to  have  had  no 
role  as  an  intermediary.  Its  native  ethnic  affinities  were 
wholly  with  its  own  continent.  It  has  given  nothing  to  South 
America  and  received  nothing  thence.  The  northward  ex- 
pansion of  Arawak  and  Carib  tribes  from  Venezuela  in  his- 
toric times  ceased  at  Cuba  and  Hayti.  The  Straits  drew  a 
dividing  line.  Local  conditions  in  Florida  itself  probably 
furnish  the  explanation  of  this  anomaly.  Extensive  swamps 
made  the  central  and  southern  portion  of  the  peninsula 
inhospitable  to  colonization  from  either  direction,  trans- 
formed it  from  a  link  into  a  barrier. 

Peninsulas  which  conspicuously  lack  an  intercontinental 
location  must  long  await  their  intermediary  phase  of  develop- 
ment, but  do  not  escape  it.  The  Cornish,  Breton  and  Iberian 
peninsulas  were  all  prominent  in  the  trans-Atlantic  enter- 
prises of  Europe  from  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century.  The 
first  French  sailors  to  reach  the  new  world  were  Breton  and 
Norman  fishermen.  Plymouth,  as  the  chief  port  of  the 
Cornish  peninsula,  figures  prominently  in  the  history  of  Eng- 
lish exploration  and  settlement  in  America.  It  seems  scarcely 
accidental  that  most  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  great  sea  captains 
were  natives  of  this  district — Sir  Francis  Drake,  Sir  John 
Hawkins,  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  and  Sir  Walter  Raleigh, 
the  latter  holding  the  office  of  vice-admiral  of  Cornwall  and 
Devon.  It  was  the  peninsula-like  projection  of  South 
America  about  Cape  St.  Roque,  twenty  degrees  farther 
east  than  Labrador,  that  welcomed  the  ships  of  Cabral  and 
Americus  Vespucius,  and  secured  to  Portugal  a  foothold  in 
the  Western  Hemisphere. 


NOTES    TO    CHAPTER    XII 


1.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  336.     London,  1896-1898. 

2.  D.  G.  Brinton,  The  American  Race,  p.  41.     Philadelphia,  1901. 


CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS    407 

3.  D.  G.  Brinton,  Races  and  Peoples,  pp.  239-240.    Philadelphia,  1901. 
Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  336.    London,  1896-1898. 

4.  A.  R.  Wallace,  Island  Life,  p.  14.    New  York,  1892. 

5.  A.   Heilprin,   Geographical   Distribution  of  Animals,  p.   69,  map. 
1887. 

6.  Ibid.,  pp.  78,  82,  90,  100. 

7.  Darwin,  Origin  of  Species,  Chap.  XII.     New  York,  1895.     A.  B. 
Wallace,   Island  Life,  p.   6.     New   York,   1892. 

8.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  Map  on  p.  43.     New  York,  1899. 

9.  Ibid.,  pp.  39,  50,  80.    Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  II,  pp.  100- 
110.     London,  1896-1898. 

10.  A.  H.  Keane,  Ethnology,  pp.  231-232,  362.     Cambridge,  1896. 

11.  McGee  and  Thomas,  Prehistoric  North  America,  p.  56,  Vol.  XIX 
of  History  of  North  America.     Philadelphia,  1905. 

12.  Fiske,  Discovery  of  America,  Vol.  I,  p.  224.     Boston,  1893. 

13.  For  various  Asiatic  and  Oceanic  elements,  see  Franz  Boas,  The 
Indians   of   British   Columbia,   Bull,   of   the  Amer.   Geog.   Society,  Vol. 
28,  p.  229.     The  Northwest  Coast  Tribes,  Science,  Vol.  XII,  pp.  194-196. 
Niblaek,  The  Indians  of  the  Northwest  Coast,  p.  385,  Washington.     H. 
H.  Bancroft,  The  Native  Races,  Vol.  I,  pp.  177,  178,  footnote;  pp.  210, 
225.     San  Francisco,  1886.     W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  map  p.  42. 
New  York,  1899. 

14.  T.  W.  Higginson  and  William  Macdonald,  History  of  the  United 
States,  p.  21.     New  York  and  London,  1905. 

15.  Edward  John  Payne,  History  of  the  New  World  Called  America, 
Vol.  II,  pp.  64-68,  74-77,  305,  388-389.     Oxford,  1899. 

16.  Justin  Winsor,  Narrative  and  Critical  History,  Vol.  I,  p.  60.    Bos- 
ton, 1889. 

17.  Cited  by  E.  J.  Payne,  History  of  the  New  World  Called  America, 
Vol.  II,  p.  29~2,  footnote  p.  294.     Oxford,  1899. 

18.  Waldemar  Jochelson,  The  Mythology  of  the  Koryak,  The  American 
Anthropologist,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  415-416,  421-425.     1904. 

19.  W.    D.   Dall,    Masks,    Labrets,    and    Certain   Aboriginal    Customs, 
Third  Annual  Report  of  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  pp.  46-147.     Washington, 
1884. 

20.  O.  T.  Mason,  Migration  and  the  Food  Quest,  pp.  275-292.     Wash- 
ington, 1894. 

21.  McGee  and  Thomas,  Prehistoric  North  America,  pp.  51,  58-82.  Phil- 
adelphia, 1905.    Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  pp.  5-7,  145-147,  153- 
154.     London,  1896-1898. 

22.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  map  p.  42,  pp.  43-44.    New  York,  1899. 

23.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  7.     London,  1896-1898. 

24.  Tylor,  Anthropology,  pp.  86-87.     New  York,   1881. 

25.  E.  J.  Payne,  History  of  the  New  World  Called  America,  Vol.  II, 
pp.  554-555.     Oxford,  1899. 

26.  Justus  Perthes,  Taschen  Atlas,  p.  17.     Gotha,  1905. 

27.  Carl  Ritter,  Comparative  Geography,  pp.  188-212.     Translated  by 
W.  L.  Gage,  Philadelphia,  1865.    N.  S.  Shaler,  Nature  and  Man  in  Amer- 
ica, pp.  11-18,  151-165.     New  York,  1896. 

28.  Strabo,  Book  II,  chap.  V.  26. 


408    CONTINENTS  AND  THEIR  PENINSULAS 

29.  McGee  and  Thomas,  Prehistoric  North  America,  p.  3,  map.    Phila- 
delphia, 1905. 

30.  D.  G.  Brinton,  Races  and  Peoples,  pp.  248-249.    Philadelphia,  1901. 

31.  D.  G.  Brinton,  The  American  Race,  pp.  58,  103-104.     Philadelphia, 
1901.    McGee  and  Thomas,  Prehistoric  North  America,  p.  86.     Philadel- 
adelphia,  1905    Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  pp.  5-7,  145-147,  153- 

32.  Ibid.,  p.  293.    E.  J.  Payne,  History  of  the  New  World  Called  Amer- 
ica, Vol.  II,  p.  315.    Oxford,  1899. 

33.  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  412-417.    MeGee  and  Thomas,  Prehistoric  North 
America,  pp.  72-75.     Philadelphia,  1905. 

34.  W.  H.  Ball,  Masks,  Labrets,  and  Certain  Aboriginal  Customs,  Third 
Annual  Report  of  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  pp.  146-147.     Washington,  1884. 

35.  Cyrus  Thomas,  Report  of  Mound  Explorations,  pp.  522-523,  722- 
728.     Twelfth  Annual  Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  Washington, 
1894. 

36.  E.  J.  Payne,  History  of  the  New  World  Called  America,  Vol.  II, 
pp.  382-383.    Oxford,  1899. 

37.  N.  S.  Shaler,  Nature  and  Man  in  America,  pp.  151,  168-173.    New 
York,  1891. 

38.  Justus  Perthes,  Taschen  Atlas,  p.  9.    Gotha,  1905. 

39.  Carl  Ritter,  Comparative  Geography,  pp.  191-192.     Translated  by 
W.  L.  Gage,  Philadelphia,  1865. 

40.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  247-258.    New  York,  1899. 

41.  Ibid.,  pp.  403-409. 

42.  E.  A.  Freeman,  Historical  Geography  of  Europe,  Atlas,  Maps,  34, 
49.     London,  1882. 

43.  For  race  elements  in  Mesopotamia,  see  D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer 
East,  Maps,  pp.  173  and  176.     London,  1903. 

44.  E.    A.    Freeman,   Historical    Geography   of    Europe,   pp.    201-202, 
506-508,  535-536,  541.     London,  1882. 

45.  Imperial  Gazetteer  of  India,  Vol.  I,  pp.  293-297.     Oxford,  1907. 

46.  Sir  Thomas  Holdich,  India,  Ethnographical  map,  p.  201,  pp.  202, 
213-216.     London,  1905.     B.  H.  Baden-Powell,  The  Indian  Village  Com- 
munity, pp.  Ill,  116,  119,  161.     London,  1896. 

47.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  312-321.    New  York,  1899.    E. 
Reclus,  Europe,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  73,  83-84.    New  York,  1882. 

48.  H.  J.  Mackinder,  Britain  and  the  British  Seas,  Ethnographic  map, 
p.  184,  and  p.  306.     London,  1904. 

49.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  22,  23,  150-151.     New  York, 
1899. 

50.  Ibid.,  pp.  248,  258,  272. 

51.  Ibid.,  pp.  247,  273. 

52.  Ibid.,  pp.  401-409,  and  map. 

53.  F.  Brinkley,  Japan,  Vol.  I,  pp.  38-42,  70,  75-80,  83-84,  126.   Boston 
and  Tokyo,  1901.     W.  E.  Griffis,  The  Mikado's  Empire,  Vol.  I,  pp.  73, 
83.    New  York,  1903. 

54.  Henry  Dyer,  Dai  Nippon,  pp.  59,  69.     New  York,  1904. 

55.  E.  A.  Freeman,  Historical  Geography  of  Europe,  p.  558.     London, 
1882. 

56.  Ibid.,  pp.  559,  561.     Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire, Vol.  V,  p.  248.     New  York,  1858. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
ISLAND    PEOPLES 

THE  characteristics  which  mark  peninsulas,  namely,  ample  Physical 
contact  with  the  sea,  small  area  as  compared  with  that  of  relation- 
the  continents,   peripheral   location,   more  or  less   complete  shiP  be~ 
isolation,  combined,  however,  with  the  function  of  bridge  or  .     ,        . 
passway  to  yet  remoter  lands,  are  all  accentuated  in  islands, 
A  list  of  the  chief  peninsulas  of  the  world,  as  compared  with 
the  greatest  islands,  shows  a  far  larger  scale  of  areas  for 
the  former,  even  if  the  latter  be  made  to  include  the  vast 
ice-capped  land-mass  of  Greenland  (2,170,000  square  kilo- 
meters or  846,000  square  miles).     New  Guinea,  the  largest 
habitable  island,  has  only  one-fourth  the  area  of  Arabia,  the 
largest  of  the  peninsulas.1     Therefore,  both  the  advantages 
and  disadvantages  incident  to  a  restricted  area  may  be  ex- 
pected to  appear  in  an  intensified  degree  in  islands. 

Peninsulas  are  morphologically  transition  forms  between 
mainland  and  islands;  by  slight  geological  changes  one  is 
converted  into  the  other.  Great  Britain  was  a  peninsula 
at  the  end  of  the  Tertiary  period,  before  subsidence  and  the 
erosion  of  Dover  Channel  combined  to  sever  it  from  the  conti- 
nent. It  bears  to-day  in  its  flora  and  fauna  the  evidence  of 
its  former  broad  connection  with  the  mainland.2  In  Pliocene 
times,  Sicily  and  Sardinia  were  united  by  a  land  bridge  with 
the  Tunisian  projection  of  North  Africa;  and  they  too,  in 
their  animal  and  plant  life,  reveal  the  old  connection  with 
the  southern  continent.3  Sometimes  man  himself  for  his  own 
purposes  converts  a  peninsula  into  an  island.  Often  he 
constructs  a  canal,  like  that  at  Kiel  or  Corinth,  to  remove 
an  isthmian  obstruction  to  navigation;  but  occasionally  he 
transforms  his  peninsula  into  an  island  for  the  sake  of 
greater  protection.  William  of  Rubruquis  tells  us  that  in 
1253  he  found  the  neck  of  the  Crimea  cut  through  by  a 
ditch  from  sea  to  sea  bv  the  native  Comanians,  who  had 


410  ISLAND  PEOPLES 

taken  refuge  in  the  peninsula  from  the  Tartar  invaders,  and 
in  this  way  had  sought  to  make  their  asylum  more  secure.4 

The  reverse  process  in  nature  is  quite  as  common.  The 
Shangtung  Peninsula  rises  like  a  mountainous  island  from 
the  sea-like  level  of  alluvial  plains  about  it,  suggesting  that 
remote  time  when  the  plains  were  not  yet  deposited  and  an 
arm  of  the  Yellow  Sea  covered  the  space  between  Shangtung 
and  the  highlands  of  Shansi.5  The  deposition  of  silt,  aided 
often  by  slight  local  elevation  of  the  coast,  is  constantly 
tying  continental  islands  to  the  mainland.  The  Echinades 
Archipelago  off  the  southwest  coast  of  ancient  Acamania, 
opposite  the  mouth  of  the  Achelous  River,  Strabo  tells  us, 
was  formerly  farther  from  shore  than  in  his  time,  and  was 
gradually  being  cemented  to  the  mainland  by  Achelous  silt. 
Some  islets  had  already  been  absorbed  in  the  advancing  shore- 
line, and  the  same  fate  awaited  others.6  Farther  up  this 
western  coast  of  Greece,  the  island  of  Leukas  has  been  con- 
verted into  a  peninsula  by  a  sickle-shaped  sandbar  extending 
across  the  narrow  channel.7  Nature  is  working  in  its  leisurely 
way  to  attach  Sakhalin  to  the  Siberian  coast.  The  strong 
marine  current  which  sets  southward  from  the  Okhotsk  Sea 
through  the  Strait  of  Tartary  carries  silt  from  the  mouth  of 
the  heavy  laden  Amur  River,  and  deposits  it  in  the  "narrows" 
of  the  strait  between  Capes  Luzarev  and  Pogobi,  building  up 
sandbars  that  come  dangerously  near  the  surface  in  mid 
channel.8  Here  the  water  is  so  shallow  that  occasionally 
after  long  prevailing  winds,  the  ground  is  left  exposed  and 
the  island  natives  can  walk  over  to  Asia.9  The  close  proximity 
of  Sakhalin  to  the  mainland  and  the  ice  bridge  covering  the 
strait  in  winter  rob  the  island  of  much  of  its  insular  char- 
acter and  caused  it  to  pass  as  a  peninsula  until  1852.  Yet 
that  five-mile  wide  stretch  of  sea  on  its  western  coast 
determined  its  selection  as  the  great  penal  station  of  the 
Russian  Empire.  The  fact  that  peninsular  India  accords 
in  so  many  points  of  flora,  fauna  and  even  primitive  ethnic 
stock  with  Madagascar  and  South  Africa,  indicates  its  former 

v^u  *.__ 

,  .      .          island  nature,  which  has  been  geographically  cloaked  by  its 
flora  and        union  with  the  continent  of  Asia, 
fauna.  Islands,  because  of  their  relatively  limited  area  and  their 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  411 

clearly  defined  boundaries,  are  excellent  fields  for  the  study 
of  floral,  faunal,  and  ethnic  distribution.  Small  area  and 
isolation  cause  in  them  poverty  of  animal  and  plant  forms 
and  fewer  species  than  are  found  in  an  equal  continental 
area.  This  is  the  curse  of  restricted  space  which  we  have 
met  before.  The  large  island  group  of  New  Zealand,  with 
its  highly  diversified  relief  and  long  zonal  stretch,  has  only 
a  moderate  list  of  flowering  plants,  in  comparison  with  the 
numerous  species  that  adorn  equal  areas  in  South  Africa 
and  southwestern  Australia.10  Ascension  possessed  originally 
less  than  six  flowering  plants.  The  four  islands  of  the 
Greater  Antilles  form  together  a  considerable  area  and  have 
all  possible  advantages  of  climate  and  soil ;  but  there  are 
probably  no  continental  areas  equally  big  and  equally 
favored  by  nature  which  are  so  poor  in  all  the  more  highly 
organized  groups  of  animals.11  Islands  tend  to  lop  off  the 
best  branches.  Darwin  found  not  a  single  indubitable  case 
of  terrestrial  mammals  native  to  islands  situated  more  than 
three  hundred  miles  from  the  mainland.12  The  impoverish- 
ment extends  therefore  to  quality  as  well  as  quantity,  to 
man  as  well  as  to  brute.  In  the  island  continent  of  Australia, 
the  native  mammalia,  excepting  some  bats,  a  few  rodents, 
and  a  wild  dog,  all  belong  to  the  primitive  marsupial  sub- 
class ;  its  human  life,  at  the  time  of  the  discovery,  was  re- 
stricted to  one  retarded  negroid  race,  showing  in  every  part 
of  the  island  a  monotonous,  early  Stone  Age  development. 
The  sparsely  scattered  oceanic  islands  of  the  Atlantic,  owing 
to  excessive  isolation,  were  all,  except  the  near-lying  Ca- 
naries, uninhabited  at  the  time  of  their  discovery ;  and  the 
Canary  Islanders  showed  great  retardation  as  compared  with 
their  parent  stock  of  northern  Africa.  [See  map  page  105.] 

Despite  this  general  poverty  of  species,  island  life  is  dis-  Endemic 
tinguished   by   a   great   proportion    of   peculiar   or   endemic  forms. 
forms,  and  a  tendency  toward  divergence,  which  is  the  effect 
of  isolation  and  which  becomes  marked  in  proportion  to  the 
duration  and  effectiveness  of  isolation.     Isolation,  by  reduc- 
ing or  preventing  the  intercrossing  which  holds  the  individual 
true  to  the  normal  type   of  the  species,  tends  to  produce 
divergences.13    Hence  island  life  is  more  or  less  differentiated 


412 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Paradoxical 
influences 
of  island 

habitats 
upon  man. 


Conservative 
and  radical 
tendencies. 


from  that  of  the  nearest  mainland,  according  to  the  degree 
of  isolation.  Continental  islands,  lying  near  the  coast, 
possess  generally  a  flora  and  fauna  to  a  large  extent  identi- 
cal with  that  of  the  mainland,  and  show  few  endemic  species 
and  genera;  whereas  remote  oceanic  islands,  which  isolation 
has  claimed  for  its  own,  are  marked  by  intense  specialization 
and  a  high  percentage  of  species  and  even  genera  found 
nowhere  else.14  Even  a  narrow  belt  of  dividing  sea  suffices 
to  loosen  the  bonds  of  kinship.  Recent  as  are  the  British 
Isles  and  near  the  Continent,  they  show  some  biological 
diversity  from  the  mainland  and  from  each  other.15 

The  influence  of  an  island  habitat  upon  its  human  occu- 
pants resembles  that  upon  its  flora  and  fauna,  but  is  less 
marked.  The  reason  for  this  is  twofold.  The  plant  and 
animal  life  are  always  the  older  and  therefore  have  longer 
felt  the  effects  of  isolation ;  hence  they  bear  its  stamp  in  an 
intensified  degree.  Man,  as  a  later  comer,  shows  closer 
affinity  to  his  kin  in  the  great  cosmopolitan  areas  of  the 
continents.  More  than  this>  by  reason  of  his  inventiveness 
and  his  increasing  skill  in  navigation,  he  finds  his  sea 
boundary  less  strictly  drawn,  and  therefore  evades  the  full 
influence  of  his  detached  environment,  though  never  able 
wholly  to  counteract  it.  For  man  in  lowest  stages  of  civiliza- 
tion, as  for  plants  and  animals,  the  isolating  influence  is 
supreme ;  but  with  higher  development  and  advancing  nautical 
efficiency,  islands  assume  great  accessibility  because  of  their 
location  on  the  common  highway  of  the  ocean.  They  become 
points  of  departure  and  destination  of  maritime  navigation, 
at  once  center  of  dispersal  and  goal,  the  breeding  place  of 
expansive  national  forces  seeking  an  outlet,  and  a  place  of 
hospitality  for  wanderers  passing  those  shores.  Yet  all  the 
while,  that  other  tendency  of  islands  to  segregate  their 
people,  and  in  this  aloofness  to  give  them  a  peculiar  and  in- 
delible national  stamp,  much  as  it  differentiates  its  plant 
and  animal  forms,  is  persistently  operative. 

These  two  antagonistic  influences  of  an  island  environment 
may  be  seen  working  simultaneously  in  the  same  people,  now 
one,  now  the  other  being  dominant ;  or  a  period  of  undis- 
turbed seclusion  or  exclusion  may  suddenly  be  followed  by 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  418 

one  of  extensive  intercourse,  receptivity  or  expansion.  Recall 
the  contrast  in  the  early  and  later  history  of  the  Canaries, 
Azores,  Malta,  England,  Mauritius  and  Hawaii,  now  a  lonely, 
half-inhabited  waste,  now  a  busy  mart  or  teeming  way- 
station.  Consider  the  pronounced  insular  mind  of  the  globe- 
trotting Englishman,  the  deep-seated  local  conservatism 
characterizing  that  world-colonizing  nation,  at  once  the  most 
provincial  and  cosmopolitan  on  earth.  Emerson  says  with 
truth,  "Every  one  of  these  islanders  is  an  island  himself,  safe, 
tranquil,  incommunicable."1  Hating  innovation,  glorifying 
their  habitudes,  always  searching  for  a  precedent  to  justify 
and  countenance  each  forward  step,  they  have  nevertheless 
led  the  world's  march  of  progress.  Scattered  by  their 
colonial  and  commercial  enterprises  over  every  zone,  in  every 
clime,  subjected  to  the  widest  range  of  modifying  environ- 
ments, they  show  in  their  ideals  the  dominant  influence  of  the 
home  country.  The  trail  of  the  Oxford  education  can  be 
followed  over  the  Empire,  east  to  New  Zealand  and  west  to 
Vancouver.  Highschool  students  of  Jamaica  take  Oxford 
examinations  in  botany  which  are  based  upon  English  plant 
life  and  ignore  the  Caribbean  flora !  School  children  in 
Ceylon  are  compelled  to  study  a  long  and  unfamiliar  list  of 
errors  in  English  speech  current  only  in  the  London  streets, 
in  order  to  identify  and  correct  them  on  the  Oxford  papers, 
distributed  with  Olympian  impartiality  to  all  parts  of  the 
Empire.  Such  insularity  of  mind  seems  to  justify  Bernard 
Shaw's  description  of  Britain  as  an  island  whose  natives 
regard  its  manners  and  customs  as  laws  of  nature.  Yet  these 
are  the  people  who  in  the  Nile  Valley  have  become  masters 
of  irrigation,  unsurpassed  even  by  the  ancient  Egyptians ; 
who,  in  the  snow-wrapped  forests  of  Hudson  Bay,  are 
trappers  and  hunters  unequalled  by  the  Indians ;  who,  in  the 
arid  grasslands  of  Australia,  pasture  their  herds  like  nomad 
shepherd  or  American  cowboy,  and  in  the  Tropics  loll  like  the 
natives,  but  somehow  manage  to  do  a  white  man's  stint  of 
work. 

In  Japan,  isolation  has  excluded  or  reduced  to  controllable  The  case 
measure  every  foreign  force  that  might  break  the  continuity  °f  Japan, 
of  the  national  development  or  invade  the  integrity  of  the 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Islands  as 
nurseries 
and  dis- 
seminators 
of  distinct- 
ive civili- 
zations. 


national  ideal.  Japan  has  always  borrowed  freely  from 
neighboring  Asiatic  countries  and  recently  from  the  whole 
world ;  yet  everything  in  Japan  bears  the  stamp  of  the  in- 
digenous. The  introduction  of  foreign  culture  into  the 
Empire  has  been  a  process  of  selection  and  profound  modifi- 
cation to  accord  with  the  national  ideals  and  needs.17  Bud- 
dhism, coming  from  the  continent,  was  Japanized  by  being 
grafted  on  to  the  local  stock  of  religious  ideas,  so  that 
Japanese  Buddhism  is  strongly  differentiated  from  the  conti- 
nental forms  of  that  religion.18  The  seventeenth  century 
Catholicism  of  the  Jesuits,  before  it  was  hospitably  received, 
had  to  be  adapted  to  Japanese  standards  of  duty  and  ritual. 
Modern  Japanese  converts  to  Christianity  wish  themselves 
to  conduct  the  local  missions  and  teach  a  national  version  of 
the  new  faith.19  But  all  the  while,  Japanese  religion  has 
experienced  no  real  change  of  heart.  The  core  of  the  national 
faith  is  the  indigenous  Shinto  cult,  which  no  later  interloper 
has  been  permitted  to  dislodge  or  seriously  to  transform; 
and  this  has  survived,  wrapped  in  the  national  consciousness, 
wedded  to  the  national  patriotism,  lifted  above  competition. 
Here  is  insular  conservatism. 

Japan's  sudden  and  complete  abandonment  of  a  policy  of 
seclusion  which  had  been  rigidly  maintained  for  two  hundred 
and  fifty  years,  and  her  entrance  upon  a  career  of  widespread 
intercourse  synchronously  with  one  of  territorial  expan- 
sion and  extensive  emigration,  form  one  of  those  apparently 
irreconcilable  contradictions  constantly  springing  from  the 
isolation  and  world-wide  accessibility  of  an  island  environ- 
ment ;  yet  underlying  Japan's  present  receptivity  of  new 
ideas  and  her  outwardly  indiscriminate  adoption  of  western 
civilization  is  to  be  detected  the  deep  primal  stamp  of  the 
Japanese  character,  and  an  instinctive  determination  to  pre- 
serve the  core  of  that  character  intact. 

It  is  this  marked  national  individuality,  developed  by 
isolation  and  accompanied  often  by  a  precocious  civilization, 
in  combination  with  the  opposite  fact  of  the  imminent  possi- 
bility of  an  expansive  unfolding,  a  brilliant  efflorescence 
followed  by  a  wide  dispersal  of  its  seeds  of  culture  and  of 
empire,  which  has  assigned  to  islands  in  all  times  a  great 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  415 

historical  role.  Rarely  do  these  wholly  originate  the 
elements  of  civilization.  For  that  their  area  is  too  small. 
But  whatever  seed  ripen  in  the  wide  fields  of  the  continents 
the  islands  transplant  to  their  own  forcing  houses ;  there  they 
transform  and  perfect  the  flower.  Japan  borrowed  freely 
from  China  and  Korea,  as  England  did  from  continental 
Europe;  but  these  two  island  realms  have  brought  Asiatic 
and  European  civilization  to  their  highest  stage  of  develop- 
ment. Now  the  borrowers  are  making  return  with  generous 
hand.  The  islands  are  reacting  upon  the  continents. 
Japanese  ideals  are  leavening  the  whole  Orient  from  Man- 
churia to  Ceylon.  English  civilization  is  the  standard  of 
Europe.  "The  Russian  in  his  snows  is  aiming  to  be  English," 
says  Emerson.  "England  has  inoculated  all  nations  with 
her  civilization,  intelligence  and  tastes."2 

The  recent  discoveries  in  Crete  show  beyond  doubt  that  Ancient 
the  school  of  Aegean  civilization  was  in  that  island.  Ancient  Cretan 
Phoenicia,  Argos,  even  Mycenae  and  Tiryns  put  off  their 
mask  of  age  and  appear  as  rosy  boys  learning  none  too  aptly 
of  their  great  and  elderly  master.  Borrowing  the  seeds  of 
culture  from  Asia  and  Egypt,21  Crete  nursed  and  tended 
them  through  the  Neolithic  and  Bronze  Age,  transformed 
them  completely,  much  as  scientific  tillage  has  converted  the 
cotton  tree  into  a  low  shrub.  The  precocity  of  this  civiliza- 
tion is  clear.  At  early  as  3000  B.  C.  it  included  an  impres- 
sive style  of  architecture  and  a  decorative  art  naturalistic 
and  beautiful  in  treatment  as  that  of  modern  Japan.22  From 
this  date  till  the  zenith  of  its  development  in  1450  B.  C., 
Crete  became  a  great  artistic  manufacturing  and  distributing 
center  for  stone  carving,  frescoes,  pottery,  delicate  porcelain, 
metal  work,  and  gems.23  By  1800  B.  C.,  seven  centuries 
before  Phoenician  writing  is  heard  of,  the  island  had  matured 
a  linear  script  out  of  an  earlier  pictographic  form.24  This 
script,  partly  indigenous,  partly  borrowed  from  Libya  and 
Egypt,  gives  Crete  the  distinction  of  having  invented  the 
first  system  of  writing  ever  practised  in  Europe.25 

Yet  all  this  wealth  of  achievement  bore  the  stamp  of  the 
indigenous ;  nearly  every  trace  of  its  remote  Asiatic  or 
Egyptian  origin  was  obliterated.  Here  the  isolation  of  an 


416 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Limitation 
of  small 
area  in 
insular 
history. 


island  environment  did  thoroughly  its  work  of  differentiation, 
even  on  this  thalassic  isle  which  maintained  constant  inter- 
course with  Egypt,  the  Cyclades,  the  Troad  and  the  Greek 
peninsula.26  Minoan  art  has  a  freshness,  vivacity,  and 
modernity  that  distinguishes  it  fundamentally  from  the 
formal  products  of  its  neighbors.  "Many  of  the  favorite 
subjects,  like  the  crocus  and  wild  goat,  are  native  to  the 
islands  .  .  .  Even  where  a  motive  was  borrowed  from 
Egyptian  life,  it  was  treated  in  a  distinctive  way,"  made 
tender,  dramatic,  vital.  "In  religion,  as  in  art  generally, 
Crete  translated  its  loans  into  indigenous  terms,  and  con- 
tributed as  much  as  it  received."27  The  curator  of  Egyptian 
antiquities  in  the  New  York  Metropolitan  Art  Museum  ex- 
amined five  hundred  illustrations  of  second  and  third  millenium 
antiquities  from  Gournia  and  Vasiliki  in  Crete,  made  by  Mrs. 
Harriet  Boyd  Hawes  during  her  superintendence  of  the  ex- 
cavations there,  and  pronounced  them  distinctly  un-Egyptian, 
except  one  vase,  probably  an  importation.28  All  this  was 
achieved  by  a  small  insular  segment  of  the  Mediterranean 
race,  in  their  Neolithic  and  Bronze  Age,  before  the  advent  of 
those  northern  conquerors  who  brought  in  an  Aryan  speech 
and  the  gift  of  iron.  It  was  in  Crete,  therefore,  that  Aegean 
civilization  arose.  On  this  island  it  had  a  long  and  brilliant 
pre-Hellenic  career,  and  thence  it  spread  to  the  Greek  main- 
land and  other  Aegean  shores.29 

A  small  cup  soon  overflows.  Islands  may  not  keep ;  they 
are  forced  to  give,  live  by  giving.  Here  lies  their  historical 
significance.  They  dispense  their  gifts  of  culture  in  levying 
upon  the  resources  of  other  lands.  But  finally  more  often 
than  not,  the  limitation  of  too  small  a  home  area  steps  in  to 
arrest  the  national  development,  which  then  fades  and  decays. 
To  this  rule  Great  Britain  and  Japan  are  notable  exceptions, 
owing  partly  to  the  unusual  size  of  their  insular  territory, 
partly  to  a  highly  advantageous  location.  Minoan  Crete, 
in  that  gray  antiquity  when  Homeric  history  was  still  un- 
born, gave  out  of  its  abundance  in  art,  government,  laws 
and  maritime  knowledge  to  the  eastern  Mediterranean  worldv 
till  the  springs  of  inspiration  in  its  own  small  land  were  ex- 
hausted, and  its  small  population  was  unable  to  resist  the 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  417 

flood  of  northern  invasion.  Then  the  dispenser  of  gifts  had 
to  become  an  alms-taker  from  the  younger,  larger,  more 
resourceful  Hellenic  world. 

The  same  story  of  early  but  short  lived  preeminence 
comes  from  other  Aegean  islands.  Before  the  rise  of 
Athens,  Samos  under  the  great  despot  Polykrates  became 
"the  first  of  all  cities,  Hellenic  or  barbaric,"  a  center  of 
Ionian  manners,  luxury,  art,  science  and  culture,  the  seat 
of  the  first  great  thalassocracy  or  sea-power  after  that  of 
Cretan  Minos,  a  distributing  point  for  commerce  and 
colonies.30  Much  the  same  history  and  distinction  attached 
to  the  island  of  Rhodes  long  before  the  first  Olympiad,31  and 
to  the  little  island  of  Aegina.32  If  we  turn  to  the  native  races 
of  America,  we  find  that  the  Haida  Indians  of  the  Queen 
Charlotte  Archipelago  are  markedly  superior  to  their  Tlingit 
and  Tsimshean  kinsmen  of  the  nearby  Alaskan  and  British 
Columbian  coast.  In  their  many  and  varied  arts  they  have 
freely  borrowed  from  their  neighbors ;  but  they  have 
developed  these  loans  with  such  marvelous  skill  and  indepen- 
dence that  they  greatly  surpass  their  early  masters,  and  are 
accredited  with  possessing  the  creative  genius  of  all  this 
coast.33  Far  away,  on  the  remote  southeastern  outskirts  of 
the  island  world  of  the  Pacific,  a  parallel  is  presented  by  little 
Easter  Isle.  Once  it  was  densely  populated  and  completely 
tilled  by  a  people  who  had  achieved  singular  progress  in  agri- 
culture, religion,  masonry,  sculpture  in  stone  and  wood  carv- 
ing, even  with  obsidian  tools,  and  who  alone  of  all  the 
Polynesians  had  devised  a  form  of  hieroglyphical  writing.34 
Easter  Isle  to-day  shows  only  abandoned  fields,  the  silent 
monuments  of  its  huge  stone  idols,  and  the  shrunken  remnant 
of  a  deteriorated  people.35 

Isolation    and    accessibility    are    recorded    in    the    ethnic  Sources 
stock  of  every  island.    Like  its  flora  and  fauna,  its  aboriginal  ° 
population     shows     an     affinity     to     that     of     the     nearest 
mainland,  and  this  generally  in  proportion  to  geographical 
proximity.     The  long  line  of  deposit  islands,  built  of  the  off- 
scourings of  the  land,  and  fringing  the  German  and  Nether- 
land  coast   from   Texel  to  Wangeroog,  is  inhabited  by  the 
same  Frisian   folk   which  occupies   the   nearby   shore.      The 


418 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Ethnic 
divergence 
with  in- 
creased 
isolation. 


Differen- 
tiation of 
peoples  and 
civilization 
on  islands. 


people  of  the  Channel  Isles,  though  long  subject  to  England, 
belong  to  the  Franco-Gallic  stock  and  the  langue  d'oil  lin- 
guistic family  of  northern  France.  The  native  Canary 
Islanders,  though  giving  no  evidence  of  previous  communica- 
tion with  any  continental  land  at  the  time  of  their  discovery, 
could  be  traced,  through  their  physical  features,  speech, 
customs  and  utensils,  to  a  remote  origin  in  Egypt  and  the 
Berber  regions  of  North  Africa  prior  to  the  Mohammedan 
conquest.36  Sakhalin  harbors  to-day,  besides  the  immigrant 
Russians,  five  different  peoples — Ainos,  Gilyaks,  Orochons, 
Tunguse,  and  Yakuts,  all  of  them  offshoots  of  tribes  now  or 
formerly  found  on  the  Siberian  mainland  a  few  miles  away.*7 

Where  the  isolation  of  the  island  is  more  pronounced, 
owing  either  to  a  broader  and  more  dangerous  channel,  as 
in  the  case  of  Madagascar  and  Formosa,  or  to  the  nautical 
incapacity  of  the  neighboring  coast  peoples,  as  in  the  case  of 
Tasmania  and  the  Canary  Islands,  the  ethnic  influence  of  the 
mainland  is  weak,  and  the  ethnic  divergence  of  the  insular 
population  therefore  more  marked,  even  to  the  point  of  total 
difference  in  race.  But  this  is  generally  a  case  of  survival  of 
a  primitive  stock  in  the  protection  of  an  unattractive  island 
offering  to  a  superior  people  few  allurements  to  conquest,  as 
illustrated  by  the  ethnic  history  of  the  Andaman  and  Kurile 
Isles. 

The  sea  forms  the  sharpest  and  broadest  boundary ;  it 
makes  in  the  island  which  it  surrounds  the  conditions  for 
differentiation.  Thus  while  an  insular  population  is  allied 
in  race  and  civilization  to  that  of  the  nearest  continent,  it 
nevertheless  differs  from  the  same  more  than  the  several 
sub-groups  of  its  continental  kindred  differ  from  each  other. 
In  other  words,  isolation  makes  ethnic  and  cultural  divergence 
more  marked  on  islands  than  on  continents.  The  English 
people,  despite  their  close  kinship  and  constant  communica- 
tion with  the  Teutonic  peoples  of  the  European  mainland, 
deviate  from  them  more  than  any  of  these  Germanic  nations 
deviate  from  each  other.  The  Celts  of  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland  are  sharply  distinguished  from  the  whole  body  of 
continental  Celts  in  physical  features,  temperament,  and 
cultural  development.  In  Ireland  the  primitive  Catholic 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  419 

Church  underwent  a  distinctive  development.  It  was  closely 
bound  up  in  the  tribal  organization  of  the  Irish  people, 
lacked  the  system,  order  and  magnificence  of  the  Latinized 
Church,  had  its  peculiar  tonsure  for  monks,  and  its  own 
date  for  celebrating  Easter  for  nearly  three  hundred  years 
after  the  coming  of  St.  Patrick.38  The  Japanese,  in  their 
physical  and  mental  characteristics,  as  in  their  whole  national 
spirit,  are  more  strikingly  differentiated  from  the  Chinese 
than  the  agricultural  Chinese  from  the  nomadic  Buriat  shep- 
herds living  east  of  Lake  Baikal,  though  Chinese  and 
Japanese  are  located  much  nearer  together  and  are  in  the 
same  stage  of  civilization.  The  Eskimo,  who  form  one  of  the 
most  homogeneous  stocks,  and  display  the  greatest  uniformity  - 
in  language  and  cultural  achievements  of  all  the  native 
American  groups,  have  only  one  differentiated  offshoot,  the 
Aleutian  Islanders.  These,  under  the  protection  and  isola- 
tion of  their  insular  habitat  from  a  very  remote  period,  have 
developed  to  a  greater  extent  than  their  Eskimo  brethren  of 
the  mainland.  The  difference  is  evident  in  their  language, 
religious  ceremonies,  and  in  details  of  their  handiwork,  such 
as  embroidery  and  grass-fiber  weaving.39  The  Haidas  of  the 
Queen  Charlotte  Archipelago  show  such  a  divergence  in 
physique  and  culture  from  the  related  tribes  of  the  mainland, 
that  they  have  been  accredited  with  a  distinct  origin  from  the 
other  coast  Indians.40 

The  differentiating  influence  is  conspicuous  in  the  speech  Differen- 

of  island  people,  which  tends  to  form  a  distinct  language  or  ^iatlon  °* 

IcUifriicifrft 
dialect   or,   in   an   archipelago,   a   group    of   dialects.      The  .    r. 

Channel  Isles,  along  with  their  distinctive  breeds  of  cattle, 
has  each  its  own  variant  of  the  langue  d'o'il.*1  According  to 
Boccaccio's  narrative  of  a  Portuguese  voyage  to  the  Canaries 
in  1341,  the  natives  of  one  island  could  not  understand  those 
from  another,  so  different  were  their  languages.  The  state- 
ment was  repeated  by  a  later  authority  in  1455  in  regard 
to  the  inhabitants  of  Lancerote,  Fuerteventura,  Gomera  and 
Ferro,  who  had  then  been  Christianized.  A  partial  explana- 
tion is  supplied  by  the  earlier  visitors,  who  found  the  Canary 
Guanches  with  no  means  of  communication  between  the 
several  islands  except  by  swimming.42  In  the  Visayan  group 


420 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Archaic 
forms  of 
speech  in 
islands. 


of  the  Philippines,  inhabited  exclusively  by  the  civilized 
Visayan  tribes  except  for  the  Negritos  in  the  mountainous 
interior,  the  people  of  Cebu  can  not  understand  their  brethren 
in  the  adjacent  islands;  in  Cuyos  and  Calmanianes,  dialects 
of  the  Visayan  are  spoken.43  [See  map  page  147.] 

The  differentiation  of  language  from  the  nearby  conti- 
nental speech  may  be  due  to  a  higher  development,  especially 
on  large  islands  affording  very  advantageous  conditions, 
such  as  Great  Britain  and  Japan.  Japanese  speech  has 
some  affinity  with  the  great  Altaic  linguistic  family,  but  no 
close  resemblance  to  any  sub-group.44  It  presents  marked 
contrasts  to  the  Chinese  because  it  has  passed  beyond  the 
agglutinative  stage  of  development,  just  as  English  has 
sloughed  off  more  of  its  inflectional  forms  than  the  continental 
Teutonic  languages. 

More  often  the  difference  is  due  to  the  survival  of  archaic 
forms  of  speech.  This  is  especially  the  case  on  very  small 
or  remote  islands,  whose  limited  area  or  extreme  isolation  or 
both  factors  in  conjunction  present  conditions  for  retarda- 
tion. The  speech  of  the  Sardinians  has  a  strong  resemblance 
to  the  ancient  Latin,  retains  many  inflectional  forms  now 
obsolete  in  the  continental  Romance  languages ;  but  it  has 
also  been  enlivened  by  an  infusion  of  Catalan  words,  which 
came  in  by  the  bridge  of  the  Balearic  Islands  during  the 
centuries  of  Spanish  rule  in  Sardinia.45  Again,  it  is  in 
Minorca  and  Majorca  that  this  Catalan  speech  is  found  in 
its  greatest  purity  to-day.  On  its  native  soil  in  eastern 
Spain,  especially  in  Barcelona,  it  is  gradually  succumbing 
to  the  official  Castilian,  and  probably  in  a  few  centuries 
will  be  found  surviving  only  in  the  protected  environment  of 
the  Balearic  Isles.  Icelandic  and  the  kindred  dialects  of  the 
Shetland  and  Faroe  Islands  had  their  origin  in  the  classic 
Norse  of  the  ninth  century,  and  are  divergent  forms  of  the 
speech  of  the  Viking  explorers.46  The  old  Frisian  tongue  of 
Holland,  sister  speech  to  Anglo-Saxon,  survives  to-day  only 
in  West  Friesland  beyond  the  great  marshlands,  and  in  the 
long-drawn  belt  of  coastal  islands  from  Terschelling  through 
Helgoland  to  Sylt,  as  also  on  the  neighboring  shores  of 
Schleswig-Holstein.47  This  region  of  linguistic  survival, 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  421 

insulated  partially  by  the  marshes  or  completely  by  the 
shallow  "Wattenmeer"  of  this  lowland  coast,  reminds  us  of 
the  protracted  life  of  the  archaic  Lithuanian  speech  within 
a  circle  of  sea  and  swamp  in  Baltic  Russia,  and  the  survival 
of  the  Celtic  tongue  in  peninsular  Brittany,  Cornwall,  Wales, 
in  Ireland,  and  the  Highlands  and  islands  of  Scotland. 

Islanders  are  always  coast  dwellers  with  a  limited  hincer-  Unification 
land.  Hence  their  stock  may  be  differentiated  from  the  ?] 
mainland  race  in  part  for  the  same  reason  that  all  coastal 
folk  in  regions  of  maritime  development  are  differentiated 
from  the  people  of  the  back  country,  namely,  because  con- 
tact with  the  sea  allows  an  intermittent  influx  of  various 
foreign  strains,  which  are  gradually  assimilated.  This  oc- 
casional ethnic  intercrossing  can  be  proved  in  greater  or  less 
degree  of  all  island  people.  Here  is  accessibility  operating 
against  the  underlying  isolation  of  an  island  habitat.  The 
English  to-day  represent  a  mixture  of  Celts  wfth  various 
distinct  Teutonic  elements,  which  had  already  diverged  from 
one  another  in  their  separate  habitats — Jutes,  Angles, 
Saxons,  Danes,  Norse  and  Norman  French.  The  subsequent 
detachment  of  these  immigrant  stocks  by  the  English  Channel 
and  North  Sea  from  their  home  people,  and  their  arrival  in 
necessarily  small  bands  enabled  them  to  be  readily  assimilated, 
a  process  which  was  stimulated  further  by  the  rapid  increase 
of  population,  the  intimate  interactive  life  and  unification  of 
culture  which  characterizes  all  restricted  areas.  Hence 
islands,  like  peninsulas,  despite  ethnic  admixtures,  tend  to 
show  a  surprising  unification  of  race ;  they  hold  their  people 
aloof  from  others  and  hold  them  in  a  close  embrace,  shut 
them  off  and  shut  them  in,  tend  to  force  the  amalgamation 
of  race,  culture  and  speech.  Moreover,  their  relatively  small 
area  precludes  effective  segregation  within  their  own  borders, 
except  where  a  mountainous  or  jungle  district  affords 
a  temporary  refuge  for  a  displaced  and  antagonized  tribe. 
Hence  there  arises  a  preponderance  of  the  geographic  over 
the  ethnic  and  linguistic  factors  in  the  historical  equation. 

The  uniformity  in  cranial  type  prevailing  all  over  the 
British  Isles  is  amazing;  it  is  greater  than  in  either  Spain 
or  Scandinavia.  The  cephalic  indices  range  chiefly  between 


422 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Remoter 
sources  of 
island  pop- 
ulations. 


77  and  79,  a  restricted  variation  as  compared  with  the  ten 
points  which  represents  the  usual  range  for  Central  Europe, 
and  the  thirteen  between  the  extremes  of  75  and  88  found  in 
France  and  Italy.48  Japan  stands  in  much  the  same  ethnic 
relation  to  Asia  as  Britain  to  Europe.  She  has  absorbed 
Aino,  Mongolian,  Malay  and  perhaps  Polynesian  elements, 
but  by  reason  of  her  isolation  has  been  left  free  to  digest 
these  at  her  leisure,  so  that  her  population  is  fairly  well 
assimilated,  though  evidences  of  the  old  mixture  can  be  dis- 
cerned.49 In  Corsica  and  Sardinia  a  particularly  low  cephalic 
index,  dropping  in  some  communes  to  73,  and  a  particularly 
short  stature  point  to  a  rare  purity  of  the  Mediterranean 
race,50  and  indicate  the  maintenance  here  of  one  ethnic  type, 
despite  the  intermittent  intrusion  of  various  less  pure  stocks 
from  the  Italian  mainland,  Africa,  Phoenicia,  Arabia,  and 
Spain.  The  location  of  the  islands  off  the  main  routes  of  the 
basin,  their  remoteness  from  shore,  and  the  strong  spirit  of 
exclusiveness  native  to  the  people,51  bred  doubtless  from  their 
isolation,  have  combined  to  reduce  the  amount  of  foreign 
intermixture. 

Islands  do  not  necessarily  derive  their  population  from 
the  land  that  lies  nearest  to  them.  A  comparatively  narrow 
strait  may  effectively  isolate,  if  the  opposite  shore  is  in- 
habited by  a  nautically  inefficient  race;  whereas  a  wide 
stretch  of  ocean  may  fail  to  bar  the  immigration  of  a  sea- 
faring people.  Here  we  find  a  parallel  to  the  imperfect  isola- 
tion of  oceanic  islands  for  life  forms  endowed  with  superior 
means  of  dispersal,  such  as  marine  birds,  bats  and  insects.52 
Iceland,  though  relatively  near  Greenland,  was  nevertheless 
peopled  by  far  away  Scandinavians.  These  bold  sailors 
planted  their  settlements  even  in  Greenland  nearly  two  cen- 
turies before  the  Eskimo.  England  received  the  numerically 
dominant  element  of  its  population  from  across  the  wide  ex- 
panse of  the  North  Sea,  from  the  bare  but  seaman-breeding 
coasts  of  Germany,  Denmark  and  Norway,  rather  than  from 
the  nearer  shores  of  Gaul.  So  the  Madeira  and  Cape  Verde 
Isles  had  to  wait  for  the  coming  of  the  nautical  Portuguese 
to  supply  them  with  a  population ;  and  only  later,  owing  to 
the  demand  for  slave  labor,  did  they  draw  upon  the  human 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  423 

stock  of  nearby  Africa,  but  even  then  by  means  of  Portuguese 
ships. 

Owing  to  the  power  of  navigation  to  bridge  the  intervening  Double 
spaces  of  water  and  hence  to  emphasize  the  accessibility  sources, 
rather  than  the  isolation  of  these  outlying  fragments  of 
land,  we  often  find  islands  facing  two  or  three  ways,  as  it 
were,  tenanted  on  different  sides  by  different  races,  and  this 
regardless  of  the  width  of  the  intervening  seas,  where  the 
remote  neighbors  excel  in  nautical  skill.  Formosa  is  divided 
between  its  wild  Malay  aborigines,  found  on  the  eastern, 
mountainous  side  of  the  island,  and  Chinese  settlers  who 
cultivate  the  wide  alluvial  plain  on  the  western  side.53  Fukien 
Strait,  though  only  eighty  miles  wide,  sufficed  to  bar  Formosa 
to  the  land-loving  northern  Chinese  till  1644,  when  the  island 
became  an  asylum  for  refugees  from  the  Manchu  invaders; 
but  long  before,  the  wider  stretches  of  sea  to  the  south  and 
north  were  mere  passways  for  the  sea-faring  Malays,  who 
were  the  first  to  people  the  island,  and  the  Japanese  who 
planted  considerable  colonies  on  its  northern  coasts  at  the 
beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century.  [See  map  page  103.] 

In  a  similar  way  Madagascar  is  divided  between  the  Ma- 
layan Hovas,  who  occupy  the  eastern  and  central  part  of 
the  island,  and  the  African  Sakalavas  who  border  the  western 
coast.  [See  map  page  105.]  This  distribution  of  the  ethnic 
elements  corresponds  to  that  of  the  insect  life,  which  is  more 
African  on  the  western  side  and  more  Indo-Malayan  on  the 
eastern.54  Though  the  population  shows  every  physical  type 
between  Negro  and  Malayan,  and  ethnic  diversity  still  pre- 
dominates over  ethnic  unity  in  this  vast  island,  nevertheless  the 
close  intercourse  of  an  island  habitat  has  even  in  Madagascar 
produced  unification  of  language.  Malayan  speech  of  an 
ancient  form  prevails  everywhere,  and  though  diversified  into 
dialects,  is  everywhere  so  much  alike  that  all  Malagasies  can 
manage  to  understand  one  another.55  The  first  inhabitants 
were  probably  African;  but  the  wide  Mozambique  Current 
(230  miles),  with  its  strong  southward  flow,  was  a  serious 
barrier  to  fresh  accessions  from  the  mainland,  especially  as 
the  nautical  development  of  the  African  tribes  was  always 
low.  Meanwhile,  however,  successive  relays  of  sea-bred  Malay- 


424- 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Mixed 
population 
of  small 

thalassic 


Polynesians  crossed  the  broad  stretch  of  the  Indian  Ocean, 
occupied  the  island,  and  finally  predominated  over  the 
original  Negro  stock.56  Then  in  historic  times  came  Arabs, 
Swahilis,  and  East  Indians  to  infuse  an  Asiatic  element  into 
the  population  of  the  coasts,  while  Portuguese,  English, 
Dutch  and  French  set  up  short-lived  colonies  on  its  shores. 
But  despite  this  intermittent  foreign  immigration,  the  funda- 
mental isolation  of  Madagascar,  combined  with  its  large 
area,  enabled  it  to  go  its  own  slow  historical  gait,  with  a 
minimum  of  interference  from  outside,  till  France  in  1895 
began  to  assume  control  of  the  island. 

Small  thalassic  islands,  at  an  early  date  in  their  history, 
lose  their  ethnic  unity  and  present  a  highly  mixed  popula- 
tion. The  reasons  for  this  are  two.  The  early  maritime 
development  characterizing  enclosed  seas  covers  them  with  a 
network  of  marine  routes,  on  which  such  islands  serve  as 
way  stations  and  mid-sea  markets  for  the  surrounding  shores. 
Sailors  and  traders,  colonists  and  conquerors  flock  to  them 
from  every  side.  Such  a  nodal  location  on  commercial  routes 
insures  to  islands  a  cosmopolitanism  of  race,  as  opposed  to 
the  ethnic  differentiation  and  unity  which  follows  an  out- 
lying or  oceanic  situation.  Here  the  factor  of  many-sided 
accessibility  predominates  over  isolation. 

The  prevailing  small  area  of  such  thalassic  islands, 
moreover,  involves  a  population  so  small  that  it  is  highly 
susceptible  to  the  effects  of  intercrossing.  Too  restricted 
to  absorb  the  constant  influx  of  foreign  elements,  the  in- 
habitants tend  to  become  a  highly  mixed,  polyglot  breed. 
This  they  continue  to  be  by  the  constant  addition  of  foreign 
strains,  so  long  as  the  islands  remain  foci  of  trade  or  strategic 
points  for  the  control  of  the  marine  highways.  Diomede 
Island  in  Bering  Strait  is  the  great  market  place  of  the 
polar  tribes.  Here  Siberian  Chukches  and  Alaskan  Eskimos 
make  their  exchanges.  The  Eskimo  of  St.  Lawrence  Island 
in  Bering  Sea,  from  long  intercourse,  have  adopted  certain 
articles  of  dress,  the  boats  and  part  of  the  vocabulary  of 
the  Chukches.57  Kilwauru,  located  on  a  sand-bank  at  the 
eastern  end  of  Ceram,  on  the  border  between  Malayan  and 
Papuan  island  districts,  is  the  metropolis  of  native  traders 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  425 

in  the  Far  East.  Here  gather  the  praus  of  the  sea-faring 
Bugis  bringing  manufactured  goods  from  Singapore,  and 
boats  laden  with  the  natural  products  of  New  Guinea.58  The 
smaller  these  island  marts  and  the  wider  their  circle  of  trade, 
the  more  mixed  is  their  population.  Thursday  Isle,  an  Eng- 
lish coaling-station  in  Torres  Strait,  is  a  port  of  call  for  all 
steamers  bound  from  Europe  or  China  for  east  Australian 
ports,  besides  being  a  center  of  a  big  local  trade  in  pearl 
shell  and  tripang.  Hence  its  population  of  526  souls  com- 
prises 270  Europeans  of  various  nationalities,  including 
British,  Germans,  Scandinavians,  Danes,  Spanish,  Portuguese, 
French  and  Australians  of  European  origin,  besides  256 
South  Sea  Islanders,  Papuans,  Africans,  Philippinos,  Chinese 
and  other  Asiatics.59 

Antiquity  shows  the  same  thing  on  a  smaller  scale,  which  Mixed 
grew,  however,  with  the  expansion  of  the  circle  of  commerce,  population 
Ancient   Aegina    in   the    Saronic   Gulf   received   inhabitants  ol 
from  Crete,  Argos,  Epidaurus  in  eastern  Argolis  and  Athens ; 
it   became   a   central   maritime   market   and   its   people   sea- 
traders,  whose  goods  of  a  certain  small  kind  became  known 
as  "Aegina  wares."6      Delos  at  the  crossroads  of  the  Aegean 
was    the    center    of   longer    radii.      It   became    the   inn    for 
travelers   and   merchants    sailing    from   Asia   and   Egypt   to 
Italy   and  Greece,   and  hence  drew  to  itself  the  trade  and 
people  of  the  whole  Mediterranean  basin.61    The  northwestern 
Indian  Ocean  had  a  similar  emporium  in  the  ancient  Dios- 
coridis,  (Sokotra)  which  focused  on  itself  the  trade  between 
Arabia  and  eastern  Africa.62 

Ceylon's  location  made  it  in  ancient  and  medieval  times 
the  common  meeting  place  for  Arab  traders  from  the  west 
and  Chinese  merchants  from  the  east ;  it  thus  became  the 
Sicily  of  the  semi-enclosed  North  Indian  Ocean.  To-day  its 
capital  Colombo  is  "the  Clapham  Junction  of  the  Eastern 
Seas,"  where  passengers  change  steamers  for  China,  India 
and  Australia ;  a  port  of  call  for  vessels  passing  from  the 
Straits  of  Malacca  to  the  Persian  Gulf  or  Mediterranean. 
Hence  Ceylon's  solid  nucleus  of  Singhalese  and  Tamil  popu- 
lation, protected  against  absorption  by  the  large  area  of 
the  island  (25,365  square  miles)  is  interspersed  in  the  coastal 


426 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Significant 
location  of 
island  way 
stations. 


districts  with  Arabs,  Portuguese,  Eurasians  dating  from  the 
old  Portuguese  occupation,  and  some  ten  thousand  Euro- 
peans.63 The  island  of  Gotland,  located  at  the  crossroads  of 
the  Baltic,  was  early  adopted  by  the  Hanseatic  merchants 
as  their  maritime  base  for  the  exploitation  of  Swedish,  Fin- 
nish, and  Russian  trade.  Here  were  "peoples  of  divers 
tongues,"  so  the  old  chronicles  say,  while  the  archeological 
finds  of  Byzantine,  Cufic,  Roman,  Anglo-Saxon  and  German 
coins  testify  to  the  wide  circle  of  trade  whose  radii  focused 
at  this  nodal  point  of  the  Baltic.64 

The  great  importance  of  such  islands  has  been  due  solely 
to  their  location.  Their  size  and  resources  are  negligible 
quantities,  but  their  natural  position  as  way  stations  lent 
them  preeminence  so  long  as  navigation  held  to  short  "laps," 
and  was  restricted  to  enclosed  seas.  In  the  wide  expanse  of 
the  open  ocean,  similar  sparsely  scattered  isles,  like  Ascension, 
St.  Helena,  the  Canaries  and  Hawaii,  assumed  importance 
in  proportion  to  their  scarcity.  Though  never  the  centers 
of  rife  intercourse  like  Delos  and  Gotland,  those  lying  con- 
spicuously in  the  track  of  commerce  have  succeeded  in  draw- 
ing to  themselves  the  typical  polyglot  nodal  population. 
Mauritius,  located  at  the  southwestern  entrance  of  the  Indian 
Ocean  about  equally  distant  from  Aden,  Ceylon,  Bombay, 
Singapore  and  West  Australia,  and  possessing  the  best 
harbor  within  many  hundred  miles,  has  been  held  successively 
by  Dutch,  French  and  English,  and  to-day  has  a  dense  popu- 
lation of  French,  English  and  Hindus.05  A  situation  at  the 
northeast  entrance  to  the  Caribbean  Sea,  keystone  of  the 
vast  arch  formed  by  the  Greater  and  Lesser  Antilles,  made 
the  island  of  St.  Thomas  a  natural  distributing  point  for  this 
whole  basin.  Facing  that  much  traveled  Virgin  Passage, 
and  forming  the  first  objective  of  vessels  bound  from  Europe 
to  Panama,  it  became  a  great  ship  rendezvous,  and  assumed 
strategic  and  commercial  importance  from  early  times.  We 
find  the  same  political  owners  here  as  in  Mauritius  and  in  the 
same  order — Dutch,  French  and  English,  though  in  1671 
the  island  was  occupied  by  the  Danes,  then  from  1807  to 
1815  by  the  English  again,  and  finally  secured  by  the 
Danes.68  The  history  of  the  Falkland  Islands  is  a  significant 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  427 

reflection  of  their  location  on  the  south  oceanic  trade  route, 
where  they  command  the  entrance  to  the  Magellan  Straits 
and  the  passage  round  the  Horn.  Here  on  the  outskirts  of 
the  world,  where  they  form  the  only  break  in  the  wide  blank 
surface  of  the  South  Atlantic,  they  have  been  coveted  and 
held  in  turn  by  the  chief  European  powers  having  colonies 
in  the  Orient, — by  France,  Spain,  England,  Spain  again,  Eng- 
land again,  by  Argentine  in  1820,  and  finally  by  England 
since  1833.  Their  possession  was  of  especial  advantage  to 
Great  Britain,  which  had  no  other  base  in  this  part  of 
the  world  intermediate  between  England  and  New  Zealand. 

Islands   located  in   enclosed   seas   display   the   transitional  Thalassic 
character  of  border  districts.     They  are  outposts  of  the  sur-  i*1*1"18  as 
rounding  shores,  and  become  therefore  the  first  objective  of      oanBirm. 
every  expanding  movement,  whether  commercial  or  political, 
setting  out  from  the  adjacent  coasts.     Such  islands  are  swept 
by  successive  waves  of  conquest  or  colonization,  and  they  carry 
in  their  people  and  language  evidences  of  the  wrack  left  behind 
on  their  shores.    This  has  been  the  history  of  Aegina,  Cyprus, 
Rhodes,   Crete,   Malta,   Corfu,   Sicily   and   Sardinia.     That 
of  Cyprus  is  typical.     It  was  the  first  island  base  for  the 
ancient  Tyrian  fleets,  and  had  its  Phanician  settlements  in 
1045  B.  C.    From  that  time  it  was  one  of  the  many  prizes  in 
the  Mediterranean   grab-bag   for  the   surrounding  nations. 
After  the  decline  of  Tyre,  it  was  occupied  by  Greeks,  then 
passed  in  turn  to  Assyrians,  Egyptians,  Persians,  Romans, 
Saracens,  Byzantines,  and  in  1191  was  seized  by  the  Cru- 
saders.   Later  it  fell  to  Egypt  again;  but  in  1373  was  taken 
by  Genoa,  in  1463  by  Venice,  in  1571  by  the  Turks,  and 
finally  in  1878  was  consigned  to  England.67     All  these  suc- 
cessive occupants  have  left  their  mark  upon  its  people,  speech, 
culture  and  architecture.     In  the  same  way  Sicily,  located 
at  the  waist  of  the  Mediterranean,  has  received  the  imprint 
of    Greeks,    Carthagenians,    Romans,    Saracens,    Normans, 
Spaniards  and  Italians.68    Its  architectural  remains  bear  the 
stamp    of    these    successive    occupants    in    every    degree    of          .    ...  q 
purity  and  blending.     The  Sicilians  of  to-day  are  a  mixture      -UdsrioBisb 
of   all  these   intrusive  stocks   and  speak   a   form  of   Italian         -ai  lo  yii 
corrupted  by  the  infusion  of  Arabic  words.68     In  1071  when 


428 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Political 

detachabil- 
ity  of  is- 

lands. 


the  Normans  laid  siege  to  Palermo,  five  languages  were 
spoken  on  the  island, — Greek,  Latin,  Hebrew,  Arabic 
and  vulgar  Sicilian,  evidence  enough  that  it  was  the 
meeting  ground  of  the  nations  of  Europe,  Asia  and 
North  Africa.70  Polyglot  Malta  to-day  tells  the  same 
story  of  successive  conquests,  the  same  shuttlecock  history.71 
Almost  every  language  of  Europe  is  spoken  here;  but  the 
native  Maltese  speech  is  a  corrupt  form  of  Arabic  mixed  with 
modern  Italian  and  ancient  Phoenician  words.72  The  whole 
island  is  ethnographically  a  border  hybrid  of  Europe  and 
North  Africa.  The  Channel  Isles  are  to-day  the  only  spot 
in  Europe  where  French  and  English  survive  side  by  side 
as  official  and  commercial  languages.  French  and  Italian 
meet  on  equal  terms  in  Corsica.  Chinese,  Japanese  and  Ma- 
lays have  traded  and  warred  and  treated  on  the  debatable 
land  of  Formosa.  The  Aru,  Ke,  and  other  small  archipela- 
goes of  the  Banda  Sea  link  together  the  pure  Malay  and  the 
pure  Papuan  districts,  between  which  they  lie. 

From  the  border  character  of  many  islands  there  follow 
often  far-reaching  historical  effects.  Like  all  border  regions 
they  are  natural  battlegrounds.  Their  historical  episodes  are 
small,  often  slow  and  insidious  in  their  movement,  but  large  in 
their  final  content;  for  they  are  prone  to  end  in  a  sudden 
dramatic  denouement  that  draws  the  startled  gaze  of  all  the 
neighboring  world.  It  was  the  destiny  of  Sicily  to  make  and 
unmake  the  fortunes  of  ancient  Carthage.  Ceylon,  from  the 
dawn  of  history,  lured  traders  who  enriched  and  conquerors 
who  oppressed  peninsular  India.  The  advance  of  Spain  to  the 
Canary  Isles  was  the  drowsy  prologue  to  the  brilliant  drama 
of  American  discovery.  The  island  of  Tsushima  in  the  Korean 
Strait  was  seized  by  the  forces  of  Kublai  Khan  in  1280  as 
the  base  of  their  attack  upon  Japan  ;73  and  when  in  1857  the 
Russian  bear  tried  to  plant  a  foot  on  this  island,  Japan  saw 
danger  in  the  movement  and  ordered  him  off.74  Now  we  find 
Japan  newly  established  in  Sakhalin,  the  Elliot  Islands  and 
Formosa,  by  means  of  which  and  her  own  archipelago  she 
blankets  the  coast  of  Asia  for  twenty-two  hundred  miles. 
This  geographical  situation  may  be  productive  of  history. 
Islands  are  detached  areas  physically  and  readily  detached 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  429 

politically.  Though  insularity  gives  them  some  measure  of 
protection,  their  relatively  small  size  and  consequently  small 
populations  make  them  easy  victims  for  a  conquering  sea 
power,  and  easy  to  hold  in  subjection.  The  security  of  an 
island  habitat  against  aggression  therefore,  increases  with 
its  size,  its  efficiency  in  naval  warfare,  and  its  degree  of 
isolation,  the  last  of  which  factors  depends  in  turn  upon  its 
location  as  thalassic  or  oceanic.  Islands  of  enclosed  seas, 
necessarily  small  and  never  far  from  the  close  encircling 
lands,  are  engulfed  by  every  tide  of  conquest  emanating 
from  the  nearby  shores.  Oesel  and  Dago  have  been  held  in 
succession  by  every  Baltic  power,  by  the  Teutonic  Orders, 
Denmark,  Sweden  and  Russia.  Gotland  has  acknowledged 
allegiance  to  the  Hanseatic  League,  to  Denmark  and  Sweden. 
Sardinia,  occupying  the  center  of  the  western  Mediterranean, 
has  figured  in  a  varied  series  of  political  combinations, — with 
ancient  Carthage,  Rome,  the  Saracens  of  North  Africa,  with 
Sicily,  Pisa,  Aragon,  Piedmont,  and  finally  now  with  united 
Italy.75  To  the  land-bred  Teutonic  hordes  which  swept  over 
western  Europe  in  the  early  centuries  of  our  era,  a  narrow 
strip  of  sea  was  some  protection  for  Sicily,  Corsica,  Sardinia, 
Malta  and  the  Balearic  Isles.  Hence  we  find  these  islands 
slow  in  succumbing  to  their  non-maritime  conquerors,  and 
readily  regained  by  the  energetic  Justinian.  Later  they  fell 
victim  to  the  sea-wise  Saracens,  but  again  gravitated  back 
to  their  closer  and  more  natural  European  connections. 

More  often  the  small  area  of  an  island  facilitates  its  re-  Insular 
tention  in  bondage,  when  the  large  and  less  isolated  conti-  wea 
nental  districts  have  thrown  off  an  unwelcome  yoke.  Athens, 
with  her  strong  navy,  found  it  an  easy  task  to  whip  back 
into  the  ranks  of  the  Delian  Confederacy  her  recalcitrant 
island  subjects  like  Naxos,  Samos  and  Thasos;  but  her 
mutinous  cities  in  peninsular  Chalcidice  and  isthmian  Megara, 
incited  to  revolt  and  aided  by  their  neighbors,76  were  less  at 
her  mercy.  This  principle  was  recognized  by  Thucydides,77 
and  taken  advantage  of  by  the  Lacedaemonians  during  the 
great  war  for  Spartan  supremacy.  England  has  been  able 
to  hold  Ireland  in  a  vise.  Of  all  her  former  French  territory, 
she  retains  only  the  Channel  Isles.  Cuba  and  Porto  Rico 


430 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Island  re- 
mains of 
broken 
empires. 


remained  in  the  crushing  grasp  of  Spain  sixty-four  y 
after  Mexico  and  the  continental  states  of  Central  and 
South  America,  by  mutual  help  and  encouragement,  had 
secured  independence.  The  islands  found  that  the  isolation 
which  confers  protection  from  outside  aggression  meant  for 
them  detachment  from  friendly  sources  of  succor  on  the 
mainland.  The  desultory  help  of  filibuster  expeditions,  easily 
checked  at  the  port  of  departure  or  landing,  availed  little 
to  supplement  the  inadequate  forces  of  rebellion  pent  up  on 
their  relatively  small  areas.  By  contrast,  Mexico's  larger 
area  and  population,  continually  stirred  by  American  ex- 
ample and  encouragement,  reinforced  by  American  volunteers 
and  even  by  United  States  army  officers,  found  revolt  from 
1812  to  1824  a  comparatively  easy  task. 

Cuba  suffered  from  its  geographic  aloofness.  So  did  little 
Crete,  which  submitted  to  Turkish  oppression  sixty  years 
after  the  continental  Greeks  had  made  good  their  claim  to 
freedom.  Nor  was  this  the  first  time  that  Cretan  liberty 
had  suffered  from  the  detachment  of  an  island  environment. 
Aristotle  recognized  the  principle  when  he  wrote :  "The  people 
of  Crete  have  hitherto  submitted  to  the  rule  of  the  leading 
families  as  Cosmi,  because  the  insular  situation  of  Crete  cuts 
off  the  interference  of  strangers  or  foreigners  which  might 
stir  up  rebellion  against  the  unjust  or  partial  government." 
And  then  he  adds  that  this  insular  exclusion  of  outside  incite- 
ment long  rendered  the  fidelity  of  the  Perioeci  or  serf- 
like  peasants  of  Crete  a  striking  contrast  to  the  uneasy 
spirit  of  the  Spartan  Helots,  who  were  constantly  stirred  to 
revolt  by  the  free  farmers  of  Argos,  Messinia  and  Arcadia.78 
Thus  ancient  like  modern  Crete  missed  those  beneficient 
stimuli  which  penetrate  a  land  frontier,  but  are  cut  off  by 
the  absolute  boundary  of  the  sea. 

Island  fragments  of  broken  empires  are  found  everywhere. 
They  figure  conspicuously  in  that  scattered  location  indi- 
cative of  declining  power.  Little  St.  Pierre  and  Miquelon 
are  the  last  geographical  evidences  of  France's  former  do- 
minion in  Canada.  The  English  Bermudas  and  Bahamas 
point  back  to  the  time  when  Great  Britain  held  the  long- 
drawn  opposite  coast.  The  British,  French,  Dutch,  Danish, 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  431 

as  once  even  Swedish,  holdings  in  the  Lesser  Antilles  are 
island  monuments  to  lost  continental  domains,  as  recently 
were  Cuba  and  Porto  Rico  to  Spain's  once  vast  American 
empire.  Of  Portugal's  widespread  dominion  in  the  Orient 
there  remain  to  her  only  the  island  fragments  of  Timor, 
Kambing,  Macao  and  Diu,  besides  two  coastal  points  on  the 
western  face  of  peninsular  India.  All  the  former  continental 
holdings  of  the  Sultan  of  Zanzibar  have  been  absorbed  into  the 
neighboring  German  and  British  territories,  and  only  the  is- 
lands of  Zanzibar  and  Pemba  remain  to  him  by  the  temporary 
indulgence  of  his  strong  neighbors.  The  Sheik  of  the  Bah- 
rein Islands  originally  held  also  the  large  kingdom  of  El 
Hasa  on  the  nearby  Persian  Gulf  littoral  of  Arabia;  but  he 
lost  this  to  the  Turks  in  1840,  and  now  retains  the  Bahrein 
Islands  as  the  residuum  of  his  former  territories.79 

The   insular   remnants   of   empires    are   tolerated,   because  Security 
their  small  size,  when  unsupported  by  important  location,  of  8uch 
usually  renders  them  innocuous ;  and  their  geographic  isola-  J 
tion  removes  them  from  international  entanglements,  unless  passjve 
some  far-reaching  anthropo-geographic  readjustment  lends 
them  a  new  strategic  or  commercial  importance.     The  con- 
struction of  the  Suez  Canal  gave  England  a  motive  for  the 
acquisition  of  Cyprus  in  1878,  as  a  nearer  base  than  Malta 
for  the  protection  of  Port  Said,  just  as  the  present  Panama 
Canal  project  led  the  United  States  to  re-open  negotiations 
for  the  purchase  of  the  Danish  Isles.     One  cannot  get  away 
from  the  impression  that  the  law  of  political  detachability 
will  operate  again  to  make  some  new  distribution  of  the  parti- 
colored political  holdings  in  the  Lesser  Antilles.     The  small 
size  of  these  islands,  and  their  thalassic  location  commanding 
approaches   to   a  large   region   of   only   partially   developed 
resources    and   to    the    interoceanic    passway    across    it,    will 
pitch  them  into  the  dice-box  on  the  occasion  of  every  naval 
war  between  their  sovereign  powers. 

The  shifting  fate  of  political  detachability  becomes 
moderated  in  islands  of  the  open  ocean,  because  of  their  re- 
moteness from  the  colonizing  or  conquering  movements 
emanating  from  the  continents.  In  contrast  to  the  changing 
political  connections  of  thalassic  isles,  consider  the  calm  or 


432 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Political 
autonomy 
of  islands 
based  upon 
area  and 
location. 


monotonous  political  history  of  outlying  islands  like  the 
Shetland,  Faroes,  Iceland,  Canaries,  M;id;-ira,  Cape  Verde, 
Azores,  St.  Helena,  Ascension  and  Hawaii.  The  Norse  colony 
of  Iceland,  as  a  republic,  maintained  loose  connections  with 
its  mother  country  from  874  to  1264;  then  for  nearly  six 
centuries  it  followed  the  political  fate  of  Norway  till  1814, 
when  an  oversight  left  it  in  the  hands  of  Denmark  on  the 
dissolution  of  the  union  of  Denmark  and  Norway.  The 
Azores  have  known  no  history  except  that  which  came  to 
them  from  Portugal ;  even  their  discovery  goes  back  to  a 
Saracen  navigator  who,  in  1147,  sailed  from  the  mouth  of 
the  Tagus  a  thousand  miles  straight  into  the  sunset.80  For 
two  hundred  years  thereafter  extreme  isolation  kept  them 
outside  the  pale  of  history  till  their  rediscovery  by  Prince 
Henry,  the  Navigator. 

Land-masses,  as  we  have  found,  are  independent  by  loca- 
tion or  independent  by  size.  Large  islands,  especially  where 
they  occupy  an  outskirt  locaton,  may  long  succeed  in  main- 
taining an  independent  national  existence;  but  to  render  this 
permanent,  they  must  supplement  their  area  by  the  acquisi- 
tion of  continental  lands,  according  to  the  law  of  increasing 
territorial  aggregates.  Great  Britain  and  Japan,  though 
ethnically  and  culturally  appendages  of  the  nearby  main- 
land, were  large  enough,  aided  by  the  dividing  sea,  to 
maintain  political  autonomy.  They  absorbed  all  the  insular 
fragments  lying  about  them  to  extend  their  areas,  and  t 
each  in  turn  entered  upon  a  career  of  continental  expansion. 
To  Japan  this  movement  as  a  determined  policy  came  Into. 
only  when  she  faced  the  alternative  of  absorbing  territory 
or  being  absorbed  by  all-devouring  Russia.  The  isolation 
of  Madagascar  resulted  in  only  slight  community  of  race 
with  Africa,  and  combined  with  large  area,  has  kept 
the  island  to  a  great  extent  distinct  from  the  political  history 
of  Africa.  The  impulses  which  swept  the  eastern  coast  of 
the  continent  reached  the  outlying  island  with  abated  force. 
Arab,  Portuguese,  Dutch  and  English  only  scratched  its 
rim.  The  character  of  its  western  coasts,  of  its  vigorous 
Malayan  population,  and  of  the  intervening  Mozambique 
Current  rendered  conquest  difficult  from  the  African  shor:>. 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  433 

Its  large  size,  with  the  promise  of  abundant  resources,  offered 
a  bait  to  conquest,  jet  put  a  barrier  in  its  way.  Hence  we 
find  that  not  till  1895,  when  the  partition  of  continental 
Africa  was  almost  accomplished,  did  the  French  conquest  of 
Madagascar  occur. 

By  contrast,  the  closely  grouped  East  Indies,  long  coveted 
for  their  tropical  products,  suffered  a  contagion  of  conquest. 
The  large  size  of  these  islands,  so  far  from  granting  them 
immunity,  only  enabled  the  epidemic  of  Portuguese  and 
Dutch  dominion  to  pass  from  one  to  the  other  more  readily, 
and  that  even  when  the  spice  and  pepper  trade  languished 
from  a  plethora  of  products.  But  even  here  the  size  of  the 
islands,  plus  the  sub-equatorial  climate  which  bars  genuine 
white  colonization,  has  restricted  the  effective  political 
dominion  of  Europeans  to  the  coasts,  and  thus  favored  the 
survival  of  the  natives  undisturbed  in  the  interior,  with  all 
their  primitive  institutions.  The  largest  islands,  like  Borneo 
and  Sumatra,  have  vast  inland  tracts  still  unexplored  and 
devoted  to  savagery,  thus  illustrating  the  contrast  between 
center  and  periphery.  When  Australia,  the  largest  of  all 
the  Pacific  island  group,  became  an  object  of  European  ex- 
pansion, its  temperate  and  sub-tropical  location  adapted  it  for 
white  colonization,  and  the  easy  task  of  conquering  its  weak 
and  retarded  native  tribes  encouraged  its  appropriation;  but 
the  natural  autonomy  which  belongs  to  large  area  and  de- 
tached location  asserted  itself  in  the  history  of  British 
Australia.  The  island  continent  is  now  erected  into  a  con- 
federation of  states,  enjoying  virtual  independence. 
In  New  Zealand,  we  find  the  recent  colonists  taking 
advantage  of  their  isolation  to  work  out  undisturbed  certain 
unique  social  theories.  Here,  against  a  background  of  ar- 
rested aboriginal  development,  another  race  evinces  a  radical 
spirit  of  progress  ;  and  to  these  contrasted  results  equally  the 
detached  island  environment  has  contributed  its  share. 

The     historical     development     of     island    peoples     bears  Historical 
always  in  greater  or  less  degree  the  stamp  of  isolation  ;  but  effects  °* 

this    isolation    may    lead    to    opposite    cultural    results.      It  J8 

.  labon: 

may  mean   in  one   case  retardation,   in   another  accelerated 


development.      Its    geographical    advantages    are    distinctly  retardation 


434  ISLAND  PEOPLES 

relative,  increasing  rapidly  with  a  rising  scale  of  civilization. 
Therefore  in  an  island  habitat  the  race  factor  may  operate 
with  or  against  the  geographic  factor  in  producing  a  de- 
sirable historical  result.  If  the  isolation  is  almost  complete, 
the  cultural  status  of  the  inhabitants  low,  and  therefore 
their  need  of  stimulation  from  without  very  great,  the  lack 
of  it  will  sink  them  deeper  in  barbarism  than  their  kinsmen  on 
the  mainland.  The  negroes  of  Africa,  taken  as  a  whole, 
occupy  a  higher  economic  and  cultural  rank  than  the  black 
races  of  Australia  and  Melanesia;  and  for  this  difference 
one  cause  at  least  is  to  be  found  in  the  difference  of  their 
habitats.  The  knowledge  of  iron,  stock-raising,  and  many 
branches  of  agriculture  were  continental  achievements,  which 
belonged  to  the  great  eastern  land-mass  and  spread  from 
Egypt  over  Africa  even  to  the  Hottentot  country;  the  lack 
of  them  among  the  Australians  must  be  attributed  to  their 
insularity,  which  barred  them  from  this  knowledge,  just  as 
the  ignorance  of  iron  and  other  metals  among  the  native  Ca- 
nary Islanders81  can  only  be  ascribed  to  a  sea  barrier  fifty- 
two  miles  wide.  The  scant  acquaintance  of  the  Balearic 
Islanders  with  iron  in  Roman  days82  points  to  insular  detach- 
ment. The  lack  of  native  domesticable  animals  in  the  Pacific 
archipelagoes  illustrates  another  limitation  incident  to  the 
restricted  fauna  of  islands,  though  this  particular  lack  also 
retarded  the  cultural  development  of  primitive  North 
America. 

Later  gtim-  On  the  other  hand,  people  who  have  already  secured  the 
ulation  of  fundamental  elements  of  civilization  find  the  partial  seclusion 
P~  of  an  island  environment  favorable  to  their  further  progress, 
because  it  permits  their  powers  to  unfold  unhindered,  protects 
them  from  the  friction  of  border  quarrels,  from  the  dis- 
turbance and  desolation  of  invading  armies,  to  which  conti- 
nental peoples  are  constantly  exposed.  But  even  here  the 
advantage  lies  in  insulation  but  not  in  isolation,83  in  a 
location  like  that  of  England  or  Japan,  near  enough  to  a 
continent  to  draw  thence  culture,  commerce  and  occasional 
new  strains  of  blood,  but  detached  by  sea-girt  boundaries 
broad  enough  to  ward  off  overwhelming  aggressions.  Such 
a  location  insures  enough  segregation  for  protection,  but  also 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  435 

opportunity  for  universal  contact  over  the  vast  commons  of 
the  sea. 

Excessive  isolation  may  mean  impoverishment  in  purse  Excessive 
and  progress  even  for  an  advanced  race.  Ireland  has  long  isolation, 
suffered  from  its  outskirt  location.  It  lies  too  much  in  the 
shadow  of  England,  and  has  been  barred  by  the  larger  island 
from  many  warming  rays  of  immigration,  culture  and  com- 
merce that  would  have  vitalized  its  national  existence.  The 
"round  barrow"  men  of  the  Bronze  Age,  the  Romans,  and  the 
Normans  never  carried  thither  their  respective  contributions 
to  civilization.  The  Scandinavians  infused  into  its  popula- 
tion only  inconsiderable  strains  of  their  vigorous  northern 
blood.84  In  consequence  the  Irish  are  to-day  substantially 
the  same  race  as  in  Caesar's  time,  except  for  the  small,  unas- 
similated  group  of  antagonistic  English  and  Lowland 
Scotch,  both  Teutonic,  in  Ulster.85  Barred  by  Great  Britain 
from  direct  contact  with  the  Continent  and  all  its  stimulating 
influences,  suffering  from  unfavorable  conditions  of  climate 
and  topography,  Ireland's  political  evolution  progressed  at 
a  snail's  pace.  It  tarried  in  the  tribal  stage  till  after  the 
English  conquest,  presenting  a  primitive  social  organization 
such  as  existed  nowhere  in  continental  Europe.  Property 
was  communal  till  the  time  of  the  Tudors,  and  all  law  was 
customary.80  Over-protected  by  excessive  isolation,  it  failed 
to  learn  the  salutary  lesson  of  political  co-operation  and 
centralization  for  defense,  such  as  Scotland  learned  from 
England's  aggressions,  and  England  from  her  close  conti- 
nental neighbors.  Great  Britain,  meanwhile,  intercepted  the 
best  that  the  Continent  had  to  give,  both  blows  and  blessings, 
and  found  an  advantage  in  each.  The  steady  prosecution 
of  her  continental  wars  demanded  the  gradual  erection  of  a 
standing  army,  which  weakened  the  power  of  feudalism ;  and 
the  voting  of  funds  for  the  conduct  of  these  same  wars  put 
a  whip  into  the  hand  of  Parliament. 

The  history  of  Iceland  illustrates  the  advantage  and  sub-  The  case 
sequently  the  drawback  of  isolation.     The  energetic  spirits  °  Iceland, 
who,  at  the  end  of  the  ninth  century,  resented  the  centraliza- 
tion  of  political   power  in   Norway   and  escaped   from   the 
turmoil  and  oppression  of  the  home  country  to  the  remote 


436 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Protection 
of  an  is- 
land en- 
vironment. 


asylum  offered  by  Iceland,  maintained  there  till  1262  the 
only  absolutely  free  republic  in  the  world.87  They  had 
brought  with  them  various  seeds  of  culture  and  progress, 
which  grew  and  flowered  richly  in  this  peaceful  soil.  Iceland 
became  the  center  of  brilliant  maritime  and  colonial  achieve- 
ments, the  home  of  a  native  literature  which  surpassed  that 
of  all  its  contemporaries  except  Dante's  Italy.88  But  after 
the  decay  of  the  Greenland  colonies  converted  Iceland  from  a 
focal  into  a  remote  terminal  point,  and  after  the  progress 
of  the  world  became  based  upon  complex  and  far-reaching 
commercial  relations,  the  blight  of  extreme  isolation  settled 
upon  the  island ;  peace  became  stagnation. 

The  concomitant  of  isolation  is  protection.  Though  this 
protection,  if  the  result  of  extreme  isolation,  may  mean  an 
early  cessation  of  development,  history  shows  that  in  the 
lower  stages  of  civilization,  when  the  social  organism  is  small 
and  weak,  and  its  germs  of  progress  easily  blighted,  islands 
offer  the  sheltered  environment  in  which  imported  flowers 
of  culture  not  only  survive  but  improve ;  in  less  protected 
fields  they  deteriorate  or  disappear.  When  learning  and 
Christianity  had  been  almost  wiped  out  on  the  continent  of 
Europe  by  the  ravages  of  barbarian  invasion  between  450 
and  800  A.  D.,  in  Ireland  they  grew  and  flourished.  In  the 
seventh  and  eighth  centuries,  the  high  scholarship  of  the 
Irish  monks  and  their  enthusiastic  love  of  learning  for  its 
own  sake  drew  to  their  schools  students  of  the  noblest  rank 
from  both  England  and  France.89  It  was  from  Irish  teachers 
that  the  Picts  of  Scotland  and  the  Angles  of  northern  Eng- 
land received  their  first  lessons  in  Christianity.  These  fixed 
their  mission  stations  again  on  islands,  on  lona  off  south- 
western Scotland  and  on  Lindisfarne  or  Holy  Isle  near  the 
east  coast  of  Northumbria.80  It  was  in  the  protected  environ- 
ment of  the  medieval  Iceland  that  Scandinavian  literature 
reached  its  highest  development. 

Insular  protection  was  undoubtedly  a  factor  in  the  brilliant 
cultural  development  of  Crete.  The  progress  of  the  early 
civilization  from  the  late  Stone  Age  through  the  Bronze  Age 
was  continuous ;  it  bears  no  trace  of  any  strong  outside  in- 
fluence or  sudden  transition,  no  evidence  of  disturbance  like 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  437 

an  invasion  or  conquest  by  an  alien  people  till  1200  B.  C. 
when  the  latest  stage  of  Minoan  art  was  crushed  by  barbarian 
incursion  from  the  north.91 

The  early  history  of  the  Singhalese  monarchy  in  Ceylon  Factor  of 
from  250  B.  C.  to  416  A.  D.,  when  even  the  narrow  moat  of  protection 
Palk  Strait  discouraged  Tamil  invasions  from  the  mainland,  .  7 
shows  the  brilliant  development  possible  under  even  a  slight 
degree  of  protection.92  However,  in  the  case  of  these  Ceylon 
Aryans,  as  in  that  of  the  Icelandic  Norse,  we  must  keep  in 
mind  the  fact  that  the  bearers  of  this  culture  were  picked 
men,  as  are  early  maritime  colonists  the  world  over.  The  sea 
selects  and  then  protects  its  island  folk.  But  the  seclusion 
of  Ceylon  was  more  favorable  to  progress  than  the  mainland 
of  India,  with  its  incessant  political  and  religious  upheavals. 
Japan,  in  contrast  to  China's  long  list  of  invasions,  shows  the 
peace  of  an  insular  location.  She  never  suffered  any  over- 
whelming influx  of  alien  races  or  any  foreign  conquest.  The 
armada  sent  by  Kublai  Khan  in  1281  to  subdue  the  islands 
paralleled  the  experience  of  the  famous  Spanish  fleet  three 
centuries  later  in  English  waters.  This  is  the  only  attempt 
to  invade  Japan  that  recorded  history  shows.93  In  the 
original  peopling  of  the  island  by  Mongolian  stock  at  the 
cost  of  the  Aino  aborigines,  there  is  evidence  of  two  distinct 
and  perhaps  widely  separated  immigrations  from  the  main- 
land, one  from  Korea  and  another  from  more  northern  Asia. 
Thus  Japan's  population  contained  two  continental  elements, 
which  seem  to  have  held  themselves  in  the  relation  of  govern- 
ing and  governed  class,  much  as  Norman  and  Saxon  did  in 
England,  while  the  Ainos  lingered  in  the  geographical  back- 
ground of  mountain  fastness  and  outlying  islands,  as  the 
primitive  Celts  did  in  the  British  Isles.  In  the  case  both  of 
England  and  Japan,  the  island  location  made  the  occupation 
by  continental  races  a  fitful,  piecemeal  process,  not  an  inun- 
dation, because  only  small  parties  could  land  from  time  to 
time.  The  result  was  gradual  or  partial  amalgamation  of 
the  various  stocks,  but  nowhere  annihilation. 

But  island  location  was  not  the  sole  factor  in  the  equation.  Of  the 
Similarity  of  race  and  relative  parity  of  civilization  between  invaders 
the   successive   immigrants  and   the   original   population,   as  as  factor. 


438  ISLAND  PEOPLES 

well  as  the  small  numbers  of  the  invaders,  made  the  struggle 
for  the  ownership  of  the  island  not  wholly  one-sided,  and  was 
later  favorable  to  amalgamation  in  England  as  in  Japan ; 
\\hereas  very  small  bands  of  far-coming  Spaniards  in  the 
Canaries,  Cuba,  and  Porto  Rico  resulted  in  the  extinction 
of  the  original  inhabitants,  by  the  process  operating  now  in 
New  Zealand  and  Australia.  Prior  to  the  arrival  of  the 
Europeans  in  the  Antilles,  the  conquest  of  these  islands  by 
South  American  Caribs  had  resulted  in  race  intermixture. 
These  sea-marauders  brought  no  women  with  them  in  their 
small  boats  from  the  distant  mainland,  so  they  killed  off  the 
men  and  married  the  Arawak  women  of  the  islands.  Here 
again  insular  location  plus  similarity  of  race  and  culture 
produced  amalgamation,  as  opposed  to  extermination  of  the 
vanquished  by  over-sea  invaders. 

While  the  insular  security  of  a  primitive  folk  like  the 
Tasmanians,  Hawaiians  and  Malagasies  is  only  passive, 
that  of  a  civilized  people  like  the  English  and  modern 
Japanese  is  active,  consciously  utilized  and  reinforced.  It 
is  therefore  more  effective,  and  productive  of  more  varied 
political  and  cultural  results.  Such  people  can  allow  them- 
selves extensive  contact  with  other  nations,  because  they  know 
it  is  in  their  power  to  control  or  check  such  contact  at  will. 
Japan  took  refuge  in  its  medieval  period  in  a  policy  of 
seclusion  suggested  by  its  island  habitat,05  relying  on  the 
passive  protection  of  isolation.  England,  on  the  other  hand, 
from  the  time  of  King  Alfred,  built  up  a  navy  to  resist  in- 
vasion. The  effect,  after  the  political  unification  of  Great 
Britain,  was  a  guarantee  of  protection  against  foreign  attack, 
the  concentration  of  the  national  defenses  in  a  navy,08  the 
elimination  of  the  standing  army  which  despotic  monarchs 
might  have  used  to  crush  the  people,  the  consequent  release 
of  a  large  working  force  from  military  service,  and  the  ap- 
plication of  these  to  the  development  of  English  industry.97 
Islands  as  Islands,  as  naturally  protected  districts,  are  often  sought 

places  of  ag  p]aces  Of  refuge  by  the  weak  or  vanquished,  and  thus  are 
drawn  into  the  field  of  historical  movement.  We  find  this 
principle  operating  also  in  the  animal  world.  The  fur  seals 
of  the  North  Pacific  have  fled  from  the  American  coasts  and 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  439 

found  an  asylum  on  the  Pribiloff  Islands  of  Bering  Sea, 
where  their  concentration  and  isolation  have  enabled  them 
to  become  wards  of  the  United  States  government,  though 
this  result  they  did  not  foresee.  The  last  Rhytina  or  Arctic 
sea-cow  was  found  on  an  island  in  Bering  Strait.98  So  the 
Veneti  of  Northern  Italy  in  the  fifth  century  sought  an 
asylum  from  the  desolating  Huns  and,  a  century  later,  from 
the  Lombards,  in  the  deposit  islands  at  the  head  of  the 
Adriatic,  and  there  found  the  geographic  conditions  for  a 
brilliant  commercial  and  cultural  development.  Formosa  got 
its  first  contingent  of  Chinese  settlers  in  the  thirteenth  century 
in  refugees  seeking  a  place  of  safety  from  Kublai  Khan's 
armies ;  and  its  second  in  1644  in  a  Chinese  chief  and  his 
followers  who  had  refused  to  submit  to  the  victorious  Man- 
chus.  In  1637  Formosa  was  an  asylum  also  for  Japanese 
Christians,  who  escaped  thither  from  the  persecutions  attend- 
ing the  discovery  of  Jesuit  conspiracies  against  the  govern- 
ment." The  Azores,  soon  after  their  rediscovery  in  1431, 
were  colonized  largely  by  Flemish  refugees,100  just  as  Iceland 
was  peopled  by  rebellious  Norwegians.  To  such  voluntary 
exiles  the  dividing  sea  gives  a  peculiar  sense  of  security,  this 
by  a  psychological  law.  Hence  England  owing  to  its  insular 
location,  and  also  to  its  free  government,  has  always  been  an 
asylum  for  the  oppressed.  The  large  body  of  Huguenot 
refugees  who  sought  her  shores  after  the  revocation  of  the 
Edict  of  Nantes  added  a  valuable  element  to  her  population. 

Islands  find  their  populations  enriched  by  the  immigration  Convict 
of  this  select  class  who  refuse  to  acquiesce  in  oppression  and  u 
injustice.  But  the  geographic  conditions  which  make  islands 
natural  asylums  make  them  also  obvious  places  of  detention 
for  undesirable  members  of  society;  these  conditions  render 
segregation  complete,  escape  difficult  or  impossible,  and  con- 
trol easy.  Hence  we  find  that  almost  all  the  nations  of  the 
world  owning  islands  have  utilized  them  as  penal  stations. 
From  the  gray  dawn  of  history  the  Isles  of  the  Blessed  have 
been  balanced  by  the  isles  of  the  cursed.  The  radiant 
Garden  of  Hesperides  has  found  its  antithesis  in  the  black 
hell  of  Norfolk  Isle,  peopled  by  the  "doubly  condemned" 
criminals  whom  not  even  the  depraved  convict  citizens  of 


440 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Penal 
colonies 
on  unin- 
habited 
islands. 


r^/-  JJotany  Bay  could  tolerate.101  There  is  scarcely  an  island 
of  the  Mediterranean  without  this  sinister  vein  in  iis  history. 
The  archipelagoes  of  the  ancient  Aegean  were  constantly 
receiving  political  exiles  from  continental  Greece.  Augustus 
Caesar  confined  his  degenerate  daughter  Julia,  the  wife  of 
Tiberius,  on  the  island  of  Pandateria,  one  of  th^  Ponza 
group ;  and  banished  her  paramour,  Sempronius  Gracchus, 
to  Cercina  in  the  Syrtis  Minor  off  the  African  coast.10' 
Other  Roman  matrons  of  high  degree  but  low  morals  and 
corrupt  officials  were  exiled  to  Corsica,  Sardinia,  Seriphos, 
Amorgos  and  other  of  the  Cyclades.10'  To-day  Italy  has 
prisons  or  penal  stations  in  Ischia,  the  Pnnza  group,  Procida, 
Nisida,  Elba,  Pantellaria,  Lampedusa,  Ustica,  and  especially 
in  the  Lipari  Isles,  where  the  convicts  arc  employed  in  mining 
sulphur,  alum  and  pumice  from  the  volcanic  cones.104 

In  modern  times  many  remote  oceanic  islands  have  gotten 
their  first  or  only  white  settlers  from  this  criminal  class. 
Such  are  the  citizens  whom  Chile  has  sent  to  Easter  Isle 
twenty-five  hundred  miles  away  out  in  the  Pacific.10^  The 
inhabitants  of  Fernando  Noronha,  125  miles  off  the  eastern 
point  of  South  America,  are  convicts  from  Brazil,  together 
with  the  warders  and  troops  who  guard  them.10'  In  1832 
Ecuador  began  to  use  the  uninhabited  Gallapagos  Islands, 
lying  730  miles  west  of  its  coast,  as  a  penal  settlement.10' 
The  history  of  St.  Helena  is  typical.  Its  first  inhabitants 
were  some  Portuguese  deserters  who  in  punishment  were 
marooned  here  from  a  Portuguese  ship  with  a  supply  of  seed 
and  cattle.  They  proved  industrious  and  had  cultivated  a 
good  deal  of  the  land  when  four  years  later  they  were  removed 
to  Portugal.  The  next  inhabitants  were  a  few  slaves  of  both 
sexes  who  escaped  from  a  slave  ship  that  had  stopped  here 
for  wood  and  water.  These  multiplied,  worked  and  restored 
the  overgrown  plantations  of  their  predecessors,  till  a  Portu- 
guese vessel  about  twenty  years  later  was  sent  to  exterminate 
them.  A  few  escaped  to  the  woods,  however,  and  were  found 
there  in  prosperity  in  1588.108  From  1815  till  1821  St. 
Helena  was  the  prison  of  Napoleon. 

Many  of  these  penal  islands  seem  chosen  with  a  view  to 
their  severe  or  unhealthy  climate,  which  would  forever  repel 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  441 

free  immigration  and  therefore  render  them  useless  for  any 
other  purpose.  This  is  true  of  the  French  Isles  du  Salut  off 
the  Guiana  coast,  of  Spanish  Fernando  Po  in  the  Gulf  of 
Guinea,  of  the  Andaman  and  Nicobar  Islands,  notoriously 
unhealthy,  which  receive  the  criminals  of  British  India,109 
and  of  numerous  others.  A  bleak  climate  and  unproductive 
soil  have  added  to  the  horror  of  exile  life  in  Sakhalin,  as  they 
overshadowed  existence  in  the  Falkland  Islands,  when  these 
were  a  penal  colony  of  Spain  and  later  of  Argentine.110 

In   the   case  of  political   offenders   and  incorrigibles,   the  Island 
island  prison  is  as  remote  and  inaccessible  as  possible.     The  prisons  for 

classic  example  is  Napoleon's  consignment  to  Elba  and  sub-  p°*  ^a 

c.      „*,  ,  .,,      offenders, 

sequently    to    St.    Helena,    whence    escape    was    impossible. 

Spain  has  sent  its  rebellious  subjects,  even  university  profes- 
sors of  independent  views,  to  Fernando  Po  in  the  Gulf  of 
Guinea  and  Teneriffe  in  the  Canaries.111  Russian  political 
offenders  of  the  most  dangerous  class  are  confined  first  in 
the  Schliisselberg  prison,  situated  on  a  small  island  in  Lake 
Ladoga  near  the  effluence  of  the  Neva.  There  they  languish 
in  solitary  confinement  or  are  transferred  to  far-off  Sakhalin, 
whose  very  name  is  taboo  in  St.  Petersburg.11'  During  our 
Civil  War,  one  of  the  Dry  Tortugas,  lying  a  hundred  miles 
west  of  the  southern  point  of  Florida  and  at  that  time  the 
most  isolated  island  belonging  to  the  American  government, 
was  used  as  a  prison  for  dangerous  Confederates ;  and  here 
later  three  conspirators  in  the  assassination  of  President 
Lincoln  were  incarcerated.115  Far  away  to  the  southeast,  off 
the  coast  of  South  America,  are  the  Isles  du  Salut,  a  French 
penal  station  for  criminals  of  the  worst  class.  The  Isle  du 
Diable,  ominous  of  name,  lies  farthest  out  to  sea.  This  was 
for  five  years  the  prison  of  Dreyfus.  Its  other  inhabitants 
are  lepers.  Isles  of  the  cursed  indeed! 

What    islands    have    they     tend    to    hold,  to    segregate,  Islands  as 
secrete     from     meddling     hands,     preserve     untouched     and  Places  °* 
unaltered.      Owing   to   this   power   to   protect,   islands   show  81 
a  large  percentage  of  rare  archaic  forms  of  animal  and  plant 
life.    The  insular  fauna  of  Australia,  Tasmania,  New  Guinea 
and  Madagascar  display  a  succession  of  strange,  ancestral 
forms  going  back  to  the  biological  infancy  of  the  world.    The 


442  ISLAND  PEOPLES 

Canaries  in  the  Atlantic  and  Celebes  in  the  Pacific  are 
museums  of  living  antiquities,  some  of  them  dating  probably 
from  Miocene  times. in  Such  survivals  are  found  elsewhere 
only  in  high  mountains,  whose  inaccessible  slopes  also  offer 
protection  against  excessive  competition.  Hence  some  of  the 
antiquated  species  of  insular  Celebes,  Formosa,  Japan  and 
Hainon  occur  again  on  the  Asiatic  mainland  only  in  the 
Himalayas.115 

For  man,  too,  islands  and  their  sister  areas  of  isolation, 
mountains,  are  areas  of  survivals.  The  shrinking  remnants 
of  that  half-dwarf  Negrito  stock  which  may  have  formed  the 
aboriginal  population  of  southern  Asia  are  found  to-day  only 
in  the  mountains  of  peninsular  India  and  in  island  groups 
like  the  Andaman  and  the  Philippines.  But  even  in  the  Philip- 
pines, they  are  confined  either  to  the  mountainous  interiors 
of  the  larger  islands,  or  to  little  coastal  islets  like  Polillo, 
Alabat,  Jomalig,  and  others. 11(  [See  map  page  147.]  Yezo, 
Sakhalin  and  the  Kurile  Isles  harbor  the  last  feeble  remnants 
of  the  Ainos,  a  primitive  people  who  formerly  occupied  a  long 
stretch  of  the  Asiatic  coast  south  of  the  Amur  mouth.  The 
protected  environment  of  these  islands  has  postponed  the 
doom  of  extinction  toward  which  the  Ainos  are  hastening.111 
With  insular  conservatism  they  dress,  live  and  seek  their  food 
on  the  sea  to-day,  just  as  depicted  in  Japanese  art  and  litera- 
ture at  the  dawn  of  history.118  [See  map  page  103.] 

Insular  It  is  chiefly  on  islands  of  harsh  climatic  conditions,  like 

survivals  Sakhalin,  or  of  peculiarly  restricted  resources  and  area, 
of  manners  \'ike  the  Andaman,  or  of  remote,  side-tracked  location,  like 
8  Iceland,  Sardinia  and  Cape  Breton,  that  the  stamp  of  the 
primitive  or  antiquated  is  strongest.  Even  when  not  ap- 
parent in  race  stock,  owing  to  the  ubiquitous  colonization  of 
maritime  peoples,  it  marks  the  language  and  customs  of  even 
these  late-coming  occupants,  because  an  island  environment 
asserts  always  some  power  to  isolate.  This  is  due  not  only  to 
the  encircling  moat  of  sea,  but  also  to  the  restricted  insular 
area,  too  small  to  attract  to  itself  the  great  currents  of 
human  activity  which  infuse  cosmopolitan  ideas  and  innova- 
tions, and  too  poor  to  buy  the  material  improvements  which 
progress  offers.  If  the  tourist  in  Sicily  finds  the  women  of 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  443 

Taormina  or  Girgenti  spinning  with  a  hand  spindle,  and  the 
express  trains  moving  only  twelve  miles  an  hour,  he  can  take 
these  two  facts  as  the  product  of  a  small,  detached  area, 
although  this  island  lies  at  the  crossroads  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean. Corsica  and  Sardinia,  lying  off  the  main  routes  of 
travel  in  this  basin,  are  two  of  the  most  primitive  and  isolated 
spots  of  Europe.  Here  the  old  wooden  plow  of  Roman 
days  is  still  in  common  use  as  it  is  in  Crete,  and  feudal 
institutions  of  the  Middle  Ages  still  prevail  to  some  extent,118 
— a  fact  which  recalls  the  long  survival  of  feudalism  in  Japan. 
The  little  Isle  of  Man,  almost  in  sight  of  the  English  coast, 
has  retained  an  old  Norse  form  of  government.  Here  sur- 
vives the  primitive  custom  of  orally  proclaiming  every  new 
law  from  the  Tynwald  Hill  before  it  can  take  effect,120  and 
the  other  ancient  usage  of  holding  the  court  of  justice  on 
the  same  hill  under  the  open  sky.  The  Faroe  Islands  and 
Iceland  are  museums  of  Norse  antiquities.  The  stamp  of 
isolation  and  therefore  conservatism  is  most  marked  in  the 
remoter,  northern  islands.  Surnames  are  rare  in  Iceland, 
and  such  as  exist  are  mostly  of  foreign  origin.  In  their 
place,  Christian  names  followed  by  the  patronymic  prevail; 
but  in  the  Faroes,  these  patronymics  have  in  a  great  many 
cases  become  recognized  as  surnames.  So  again,  while  the 
Faroese  women  still  use  a  rude  spinning-wheel  introduced 
from  Scotland  in  1671,  in  Iceland  this  spinning-wheel  was 
still  an  innovation  in  1800,  and  even  to-day  competes  with 
spindles.  Hand-querns  for  grinding  wheat,  stone  hammers 
for  pounding  fish  and  roots,  the  wooden  weighing-beam  of 
the  ancient  Northmen,  and  quaint  marriage  customs  give 
the  final  touch  of  aloofness  and  antiquity  to  life  on  these  re- 
mote islands.121 

As  all  island  life  bears  more  or  less  the  mark  of  isolation,  Effects  of 
so  it  betrays  the  narrow  area  that  has  served  at  its  base,  small  area 
Though  islands  show  a  wide  variation  in  size  from  the  301,-  in  islands- 
000  square  miles  (771,900  square  kilometers)  of  New  Guinea 
or  the  291,000  square  miles  (745,950  square  kilometers)  of 
Borneo  to  the  private  estates  like  the  Scilly  Isles,  Gardiner 
and  Shelter  islands  off  Long  Island,  or  those  small,  sea-fenced 
pastures  for  sheep  and  goats  near  the  New  England  coast 


444 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Political 
dominion 
of  small 
islands. 


and  in  the  Aegean,  yet  small  islands  predominate ;  the  large 
ones  are  very  few.  Islands  comprise  a  scant  seven  per  cent, 
of  the  total  land  area  of  the  earth,  and  their  number  is 
very  great, — nine  hundred,  for  instance,  in  the  Philippine 
group  alone.  Therefore  small  area  is  a  conspicuous  feature 
of  islands  generally.  It  produces  in  island  people  all  those 
effects  which  are  characteristic  of  small,  naturally  defined 
areas,  especially  early  or  precocious  social,  political  and 
cultural  development.  The  value  of  islands  in  this  respect 
belongs  to  the  youth  of  the  world,  as  seen  in  the  ancient 
Mediterranean,  or  in  the  adolescence  of  modern  primitive 
races ;  it  declines  as  the  limitations  rather  than  the  advantages 
of  restricted  territory  preponderate  in  later  historical  de- 
velopment. 

This  early  maturity,  combined  with  the  power  to  expend 
the  concentrated  national  or  tribal  forces  in  any  given 
direction,  often  results  in  the  domination  of  a  very  small 
island  over  a  large  group.  In  the  Society  Islands,  Cook 
found  little  Balabola  ruling  over  Ulietea  (Raitea)  and  Otaha, 
the  former  of  these  alone  being  over  twice  the  size  of  Bolabola, 
whose  name  commanded  respect  as  far  as  Tahiti.12"  The 
Fiji  Archipelago  was  ruled  in  pre-Christian  days  by  the  little 
islet  of  Mbau,  scarcely  a  mile  long,  which  lies  like  a  pebble 
beside  massive  Viti  Levu.  It  was  the  chief  center  of  political 
power  and  its  supremacy  was  owned  by  nearly  all  the  group. 
The  next  important  political  center  was  Rewa,  no  larger  than 
Mbau,  which  had  for  its  subject  big  Mbengga.li;:  In  the 
same  way,  the  Solomon  group  was  ruled  by  Mongusaie  and 
Simbo,  just  as  tiny  New  Lauenberg  lorded  it  over  the  larger 
islands  of  the  Bismarck  Archipelago.124  When  the  Dutch  in 
1613  undertook  the  conquest  of  the  coveted  Spice  Isles,  they 
found  there  two  rival  sultans  seated  in  the  two  minute  islets 
of  Ternate  and  Tidore  off  the  west  coast  of  Gilolo.  Their 
collective  possessions,  which  the  Dutch  took,  comprised  all 
the  Moluccas,  the  Ke  and  Banda  groups,  the  whole  of  north- 
western New  Guinea,  and  Mindanao  of  the  Philippines.125 

It  was  no  unusual  thing  for  classic  Aegean  isles  to  con- 
trol and  exploit  goodly  stretches  of  the  nearest  coast,  or  to 
exercise  dominion  over  other  islands.  Aristotle  tells  us  that 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  445 

Crete's  location  across  the  southern  end  of  the  Aegean  Sea 
confirmed  to  it  by  nature  the  early  naval  empire  of  the  Hel- 
lenic world.  Minos  conquered  some  of  the  islands,  colonized 
others,126  and,  according  to  the  story  of  Theseus  and  the  Min- 
otaur, laid  Athens  under  tribute ;  but  his  suppression  of  piracy 
in  these  waters  and  his  conspicuous  leadership  in  the  art  of 
navigation  point  to  a  yet  more  significant  supremacy.  So 
insular  Venice  ruled  and  exploited  large  dependencies.  The 
island  of  Zealand,  strategically  located  at  the  entrance  to  the 
Baltic,  has  been  the  heart  and  head  and  strong  right  arm  of 
the  Danish  dominion,  through  all  its  long  history  of  fluctuat- 
ing boundaries.  England's  insularity  has  been  the  strongest 
single  factor  in  the  growth  of  her  vast  colonial  empire  and  in 
the  maintenance  of  its  loyal  allegiance  and  solidarity.  The 
widely  strewn  plantation  of  her  colonies  is  the  result  of  that 
teeming  island  seed-bed  at  home ;  while  the  very  smallness  of 
the  mother  country  is  the  guarantee  of  its  supremacy  over  its 
dependencies,  because  it  is  too  small  either  to  oppress  them  or 
to  get  along  without  them.  Now  an  Asiatic  variant  of  Eng- 
lish history  is  promised  us  by  growing  Japan. 

Though  political  supremacy  is  possible  even  to  an  island  Economic 
of  insignificant  size,  both  the  advantages  and  the  grave  limitations 
disadvantages  of  small  area  are  constantly  asserting  them- 
selves. Some  developments  peculiar  to  large  territory  are 
here  eliminated  at  the  start.  For  instance,  robbery  and 
brigandage,  which  were  so  long  a  scourge  in  peninsular  Greece, 
were  unheard  of  on  the  small  Aegean  islands.  Sheep-raising 
was  at  an  early  date  safer  in  England  than  on  the  Continent, 
because  wolves  were  earlier  exterminated  there.  Bio-geog- 
raphy shows  an  increasing  impoverishment  in  the  flora  and 
fauna  of  small  islands  with  distance  from  the  mainland.  In 
the  Pacific  Ocean,  this  progressive  impoverishment  from  west 
to  east  has  had  great  influence  upon  human  life  in  the  islands. 
In  Polynesia,  therefore,  all  influences  of  the  chase  and  of 
pastoral  life  are  wanting,  while  in  Melanesia,  with  its  larger 
islands  and  larger  number  of  land  animals,  hunting  still 
plays  an  important  part,  and  is  the  chief  source  of  subsistence 
for  many  New  Guinea  villages.12'  Therefore  a  corresponding 
decay  of  projectile  weapons  is  to  be  traced  west  to  east, 


446 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Poverty  of 
alluvial 
lowlands 
in  islands. 


and  is  conspicuous  in  those  crumbs  of  land  constituting 
Polynesia  and  Micronesia.  The  limit  of  the  bow  and  arrow 
includes  the  northeastern  portion  of  the  Philippine  group, 
cuts  through  the  Malay  Archipelago  so  as  to  include  the 
Moluccas  and  Flores,  includes  Melanesia  as  far  as  Tonga  or 
the  Friendly  Isles,  but  excludes  Micronesia,  Polynesia  and 
Australia.  Even  in  Melanesia,  however,  bows  and  arrows 
are  not  universal ;  they  are  lacking  in  peripheral  islands  like 
New  Caledonia  and  New  Ireland.12* 

The  restriction  of  trees,  also,  with  the  exception  of  the 
coco-palm  and  pandanus,  has  had  its  effect  upon  boat  making. 
This  general  impoverishment  is  unmistakably  reflected  in 
the  whole  civilization  of  the  smaller  islands  of  Polynesia  and 
Micronesia,  especially  in  the  Paumota  and  Pelew  groups. 
In  the  countless  coralline  islands  which  strew  the  Pacific, 
another  restricting  factor  is  found  in  their  monotonous  geo- 
logical formation.  Owing  to  the  lack  of  hard  stone,  especially 
of  flint,  native  utensils  and  weapons  have  to  be  fashioned 
out  of  wood,  bones,  shells,  and  sharks'  teeth. 12£ 

Nor  does  the  geographical  limitation  end  here.  Islands 
have  proportionately  a  scanter  allowance  of  fertile  alluvial 
lowlands  than  have  continents.  This  follows  from  their 
geological  history,  except  in  the  case  of  those  low  deposit 
islands  built  up  from  the  waste  of  the  land.  Most  islands 
are  summits  of  submerged  mountain  ranges,  like  Corsica 
and  Sardinia,  the  Aegean  archipelagoes,  the  Greater  Antilles, 
Vancouver,  and  the  countless  fiord  groups ;  or  they  are  single 
or  composite  volcanic  cones,  like  the  Canaries,  Azores,  Lipari, 
Kurile,  Fiji,  Ascension,  St.  Helena  and  the  Lesser  Antilles; 
or  they  are  a  combination  of  highland  subsidence  and  vol- 
canic out-thrust,  like  Japan,  the  Philippines,  the  long  Sunda 
chain  and  Iceland.  Both  geologic  histories  involve  high 
reliefs,  steep  slopes,  a  deep  surrounding  sea,  and  hence  rarely 
a  shallow  continental  shelf  for  the  accumulation  of  broad 
alluvial  lowlands.  Among  the  Aegean  Isles  only  Naxos  has 
a  flood  plain ;  all  the  rest  have  steep  coasts,  with  few  sand  or 
gravel  beaches,  and  only  small  deposit  plains  at  the  head  of 
deep  and  precipitous  embayments.  Japan's  area  of  arable 
soil  is  to-day  only  15.7  per  cent,  of  its  total  surface,  even 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  447 

after  the  gentler  slopes  of  its  mountains  have  been  terraced 
up  two  thousand  feet.  Some  authorities  put  the  figure  lower, 
at  10  and  12  per  cent. 

Yet  in  spite  of  limited  area  and  this  paucity  of  local  re-  Dense 
sources,    islands   constantly   surprise   us   by   their    relatively  populations 
dense  populations.     More  often  than  not  they  show  a  density  ° 
exceeding  that  of  the  nearest  mainland  having  the  same  zonal 
location,  often  the  same  geologic  structure  and  soil.     Along 
with  other   small,   naturally   defined   areas,   they   tend   to   a 
closer  packing  of  the  population.    Yet  side  by  side  with  this 
relative   over-population,   we   find   other   islands   uninhabited 
or  tenanted  only  by  sheep,  goats  and  cattle. 

In  the  wide  Pacific  world  comprising  Australia  and  Ocean- 
ica,  islands  take  up  fifteen  per  cent,  of  the  total  land  area, 
but  they  contain  forty-four  per  cent,  of  the  population. 13C 
The  insular  empire  of  Japan,  despite  the  paucity  of  its 
arable  soil,  has  a  density  of  population  nearly  twice  that  of 
China,  nearly  three  times  that  of  Korea,  and  exceeding  that 
of  any  political  subdivision  of  continental  Asia ;  but  Japan, 
in  turn,  is  surpassed  in  congestion  only  by  Java,  with  a 
density  of  587  to  the  square  mile,131  which  almost  equals  that 
of  Belgium  (643)  and  England  (600).  Great  Britain  has  a 
density  of  population  (453  to  the  square  mile)  only  exceeded 
in  continental  Europe  by  that  of  Belgium,  but  surpassed  near- 
ly threefold  by  that  of  the  little  Channel  Isles,  which  amounts 
to  1254  to  the  square  mile.13'  If  the  average  density  of  the 
United  Kingdom  is  greatly  diminished  in  Ireland,  just  as 
Italy's  is  in  Sardinia  and  France's  in  Corsica,  this  fact  is 
due  primarily  to  a  side-tracked  or  overshadowed  location 
and  adverse  topography,  combined  with  misgovernment. 

If  we  compare  countries  which  are  partly  insular,  partly 
continental,  the  same  truth  emerges.  The  kingdom  of  Greece 
has  fifteen  per  cent,  of  its  territory  in  islands.  Here  again 
population  reaches  its  greatest  compactness  in  Corfu  and 
Zante,  which  are  nearly  thrice  as  thickly  inhabited  as  the 
rest  of  Greece. 13;  Similarly  the  islands  which  constitute  so 
large  a  part  of  Denmark  have  an  average  density  of  269  to 
the  square  mile  as  opposed  to  the  112  of  Jutland.  The 
figures  rise  to  215  to  the  square  mile  in  the  Danish  West 

,    fauff   -ie^v    M*A~- 


c<* 

'*"<  <^p*>*— 

_ 

' 


448  ISLAND  PEOPLES 

Indies,  but  drop  low  in  the  bleak,  subarctic  insular  depend- 
encies of  Greenland,  Iceland  and  the  Faroes.  Portugal's 
density  is  tripled  in  the  Madeiras134  and  doubled  in  the 
Azores,135  but  drops  in  the  badly  placed  Cape  Verde  Island, 
exposed  to  tropical  heat  and  the  desiccating  tradewinds 
blowing  off  the  Sahara.  Spain's  average  rises  twenty-five  per 
cent,  in  the  Canary  Islands,  which  she  has  colonized,  and 
France's  nearly  doubles  in  the  French  West  Indies.  The 
British  West  Indies,  also,  with  the  exception  of  the  broken 
coral  bank  constituting  the  Bahamas,  show  a  similar  sur- 
prising density  of  population,  which  in  Bermuda  and  Barba- 
does  surpasses  that  of  England,  and  approximates  the  teem- 
ing human  life  of  the  Channel  Isles. 

Density  of  This  general  tendency  toward  a  close  packing  of  the  popu- 
population  lation  in  the  smaller  areas  of  land  comes  out  just  as  distinctly 
in  islands  inhabited  by  natural  peoples  in  the  lower  stages 
of  development.  Despite  the  retarded  economic  methods 
peculiar  to  savagery  and  barbarism,  the  Polynesian  islands, 
for  instance,  often  show  a  density  of  population  equal  to  that 
of  Spain  and  Greece  (100  to  the  square  mile)  and  exceeding 
that  of  European  Turkey  and  Russia.  "Over  the  whole  ex- 
tent of  the  South  Sea,"  says  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  "from 
one  tropic  to  another,  we  find  traces  of  a  bygone  state  of 
over-population,  when  the  resources  of  even  a  tropical  soil 
were  taxed,  and  even  the  improvident  Polynesian  trembled 
for  the  future."136  He  calls  the  Gilbert  atolls  "warrens  of 
men."1  One  of  them,  Drummond's  Island,  with  an  area  of 
about  twenty  square  miles,  contained  a  population  of  10,000 
in  1840,  and  all  the  atolls  were  densely  populated.13'  To-c!.iy 
they  count  35,000  inhabitants  in  less  than  200  square  miles. 
The  neighboring  Marshall  group  has  15,000  on  its  158 
square  miles  of  area.  The  Caroline  and  Pelew  archipelagoes 
show  a  density  of  69  to  the  square  mile,  the  Tonga  or 
Friendly  group  harbor  about  60  and  the  French  holdings  of 
Futuma  and  Wallis  (or  Uea)  the  same.139  So  the  Bismarck 
Archipelago,  Solomon,  Hawaiian,  Samoan  and  Marianne 
islands  have  to-day  populations  by  no  means  sparse,  despite 
the  blight  that  everywhere  follows  the  contact  of  superior 
with  primitive  peoples. 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  449 

In  all  these  cases,  if  economic  status  be  taken  into  account,  Various 
we  have  a  density  bordering  on  congestion ;  but  the  situation  causes  °* 
assumes  a  new  aspect  if  we  realize  that  the  crowded  in-  . 
habitants  of  small  islands  often  have  the  run  of  the  coco 
plantations  and  fishing  grounds  of  an  entire  archipelago. 
The  smaller,  less  desirable  islands  are  retained  as  fish  and 
coco-palm  preserves  to  be  visited  only  periodically.  Of  a 
low,  cramped,  monotonous  coral  group,  often  only  the  largest 
and  most  productive  is  inhabited,140  but  that  contains  a 
population  surprising  in  view  of  the  small  base,  restricted 
resources  and  low  cultural  status  of  its  inhabitants.  The 
population  of  the  wide-strewn  Paumota  atolls  was  estimated 
as  about  10,000  in  1840.  Of  these  fully  one-half  lived  on 
Anaa  or  Chain  Island,  and  one-fourth  on  Gambier,  but  they 
levied  on  the  resources  of  the  other  islands  for  supplies.141 
The  Tonga  Islands  at  the  same  time  were  estimated  to  have 
20,000  inhabitants,  about  half  of  whom  were  concentrated  on 
Tongatabu,  while  Hapai  and  Varao  held  about  4,000 
each.142 

This  is  one  of  the   sharp  contrasts  in  island  life, — here  Crowded 

density  akin  to  congestion,  there  a  few  miles  away  a  deserted  a 

,    J  •  •         e  a.  vacant 

reef  or  cone  rising  trom  the  sea,  tenanted  only  by  sheep  or  j_iands 

goats  or  marine  birds,  its  solitude  broken  only  by  the  occa- 
sional crunching  of  a  boat's  keel  upon  its  beach,  as  some 
visitant  from  a  neighboring  isle  comes  to  shear  wool,  gather 
coco-nuts,  catch  birds  or  collect  their  eggs.  All  the  500  in- 
habitants of  the  Westman  Isles  off  the  southern  coast  of  Ice- 
land live  in  one  village  on  Heimey,  and  support  themselves 
almost  entirely  by  fishing  and  fowling  birds  on  the  wild  crags 
of  the  archipelago.145  An  oceanic  climate,  free  contact  with 
the  Gulf  Stream,  and  remoteness  from  the  widespread  ice 
fields  of  Iceland  give  them  an  advantage  over  the  vast  island 
to  the  north.  Only  twenty-seven  of  the  ninety  islands  com- 
posing the  Orkney  group  are  inhabited,  and  about  forty 
smaller  ones  afford  natural  meadows  for  sheep  on  their  old 
red  sandstone  soil;144  but  Pomona,  the  largest  Orkney  has 
17,000  inhabitants  on  its  207  square  miles  of  territory  or 
85  to  the  square  mile.  The  Shetlands  tell  the  same  story — 29 
cut  of  100  islands  inhabited,  some  of  the  holms  or  smaller  islets 


450 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Oceanic 
climate  as 
factor. 


serving  as  pastures  for  the  sturdy  ponies  and  diminutive 
cattle,  and  Mainland,  the  largest  of  the  group,  showing  53  in- 
habitants to  the  square  mile.  Tlii.s  is  a  density  far  greater 
than  is  reached  in  the  nearby  regions  of  Scotland,  where  the 
county  of  Sutherland  can  boast  only  13  to  the  square  mile, 
and  Invernesshire  20.  Here  again  insularity  and  contracted 
area  do  their  work  of  compressing  population. 

The  causes  of  this  insular  density  of  population  are  not 
far  to  seek.  Islands  can  always  rely  on  the  double  larder  of 
land  and  sea.  They  are  moreover  prone  to  focus  in  them- 
selves the  fishing  industry  of  a  large  continental  area,  owing 
to  their  ample  contact  with  the  sea.  Shetland  is  now  the  chief 
seat  of  the  Scotch  herring  fishery,  a  fact  which  contributes 
to  its  comparatively  dense  population.  The  concentration  of 
the  French  export  trade  of  Newfoundland  fish  in  little  St. 
Pierre  and  Miquelon  accounts  for  the  relatively  teeming 
population  (70  to  the  square  mile)  and  the  wealth  of  those 
scraps  of  islands.  So  the  Lofoden  Islands  of  Norway,  like 
Iceland,  Newfoundland  and  Sakhalin,  balance  a  generous  sea 
against  an  ungenerous  soil,  and  thus  support  a  population 
otherwise  impossible. 

For  these  far  northern  islands,  the  moderating  effect  of 
an  oceanic  climate  has  been  a  factor  in  making  them  relatively 
populous,  just  as  it  is  on  tropical  isles  by  mitigating  heat  and 
drought.  The  prosperity  and  populousness  of  the  Bermuda 
Islands  are  to  be  explained  largely  by  the  mild,  equable 
climate  which  permits  the  raising  of  early  vegetables  and 
flowers  for  English  and  American  markets.  Like  climatic 
conditions  and  a  like  industry  account  for  the  2,000  souls 
living  on  the  inhabited  islands  of  the  Scilly  group.  Here 
intensive  horticulture  supports  a  large  force  of  wrorkmen  and 
yields  a  profit  to  the  lord  proprietor.  Syros  in  the  Cyclades 
fattens  on  its  early  spring  vegetable  trade  with  Athens  and 
Constantinople.145 

In  the  Mediterranean  lands,  where  drought  and  excessive 
heat  during  the  growing  season  offer  adverse  conditions  for 
agriculture,  the  small  islands,  especially  those  of  fertile  vol- 
canic soil,  show  the  greatest  productivity  and  hence  marked 
density  of  population.  Though  the  rainfall  may  be  slight, 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  451 

except  where  a  volcanic  peak  rises  to  condense  moisture, 
heavy  dews  and  the  thick  mists  of  spring  quicken  vegetation. 
This  is  the  case  in  Malta,  which  boasts  a  population  of  2,000 
to  the  square  mile,  exclusive  of  the  English  garrison.1*6  Lit- 
tle Limosa  and  Pantellaria,  the  merest  fragments  of  land  out 
in  the  mid-channel  of  the  Mediterranean,  have  a  population 
of  200  to  the  square  mile.147  The  Lipari  group  north  of 
Sicily  average  nearly  400  on  every  square  mile  of  their  fertile 
soil  ;148  but  this  average  rises  in  Salina  to  500,  and  in  Lipari 
itself,  as  also  in  Ponza  of  the  Pontine  group,  to  nearly  1300. 
Here  fertile  volcanic  slopes  of  highly  cultivated  land  lift 
vineyards,  orchards  of  figs,  and  plantations  of  currants  to 
the  sunny  air.  But  nearby  Alicuri,  almost  uncultivated,  has 
a  sparse  population  of  some  five  hundred  shepherds  and 
fishermen.  Pan  aria  and  Filicuri  are  in  about  the  same  plight. 
Here  again  we  find  those  sharp  island  contrasts. 

The  insular  region  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  which  is  inhabited  Relation 
by  peoples  quite  different  in  race  and  cultural  status  from  °*  density 
those  of  the  Mediterranean,  yet  again  demonstrates  the  power 
of  islands  to  attract,  preserve,  multiply  and  concentrate 
population.  This  is  especially  true  of  the  smaller  islands, 
which  in  every  case  show  a  density  of  population  many  times 
that  of  the  neighboring  mainland  of  Africa.  Only  vast 
Madagascar,  continental  in  size,  repeats  the  sparsity  of  the 
continent.  An  oceanic  climate  increases  the  humidity  of  the 
islands  as  compared  with  the  mainland  lying  in  the  same 
desiccating  tradewind  belt.  Moreover  their  small  area  has 
enabled  them  to  be  permeated  by  incoming  Arab,  English, 
and  French  influences,  which  have  raised  their  status  of  civili- 
zation and  therewith  the  average  density  of  population.  This 
culminates  in  English  Mauritius,  which  shows  540  inhabitants 
to  the  square  mile,  occupied  in  the  production  of  sugar, 
molasses,  rum,  vanilla,  aloes,  and  copra.  In  Zanzibar  this 
density  is  220  to  the  square  mile ;  in  Reunion  230 ;  in  Mayotte, 
the  Comores  and  Seychelles,  the  average  varies  from  100  to 
145  to  the  square  mile,  though  Mahe  in  the  Seychelles  grcup 
has  one  town  of  20,000  inhabitants.149 

In    the    Malay    Archipelago,     an     oceanic    climate    and 
tropical  location  have  combined  to  stimulate  fertility  to  the 


452  ISLAND  PEOPLES 

greatest  extent;  but  this  local  wealth  has  been  exploited  in 
the  highest  degree  in  the  smaller  islands  having  relatively  the 
longest  coastline  and  amplest  contact  with  the  sea.  The 
great  continent-like  areas  of  Borneo,  New  Guinea  and  Su- 
matra show  a  correspondingly  sparse  population ;  Java, 
smaller  than  the  smallest  of  these  and  coated  with  mud  from 
its  fertilizing  volcanoes,  supports  587  inhabitants  to  the 
square  mile;  but  this  exceptional  average  is  due  to  rare  local 
productivity.  Java's  little  neighbors  to  the  east,  Bali  and 
Lombok,  each  with  an  area  of  only  about  2100  square  miles, 
have  a  density  respectively  of  333  and  195  to  the  square 
mile.  This  density  rises  suddenly  in  small  Amboina  (area 
264  square  miles),  the  isle  of  the  famous  clove  monopoly, 
to  1000,150  drops  in  the  other  Moluccas,  where  Papuan  in- 
fluences are  strong,  even  to  20,  but  rises  again  in  the  pure 
Malayan  Philippines  to  69.  In  the  Philippines  a  distinct 
connection  is  to  be  traced  between  the  density  of  population 
and  smallness  of  area.  The  explanation  lies  in  the  attraction 
of  the  coast  for  the  sea-faring  Malay  race,  and  the  mathe- 
matical law  of  increase  of  shoreline  with  decrease  of  insular 
area.  Since  65  per  cent,  of  the  whole  Philippine  population 
inhabits  coastal  municipalities,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the 
73  islands  from  ten  to  a  hundred  square  miles  in  area  count 
127  inhabitants  to  the  square  mile,  and  those  of  less  than  ten 
square  miles,  of  which  there  are  nearly  a  thousand,  have  a 
density  of  238.151 

This  same  insular  density,  supported  by  fertility,  fisheries 
and  trade,  appears  again  in  the  West  Indies,  and  also  the 
contrast  in  density  between  large  and  small  islands  down  to 
a  certain  limit  of  diminutiveness.  The  Greater  Antilles  in- 
crease in  density  from  Cuba  through  smaller  Haiti  and 
Jamaica  down  to  little  Porto  Rico,  which  boasts  264-  in- 
habitants to  the  square  mile.  In  the  smaller  area  of  the 
Danish  Indies  and  Guadeloupe  about  this  same  density  (215 
and  274)  reappears;  but  it  mounts  to  470  in  Martinique  and 
to  1160  in  Barbadoes.152 

Island  Climate  advantages  often  encourage  density  of  population 

resorts.  on  islands,  by  attracting  to  them  visitors  who  make  a  local 

demand  for  the  fruits  of  the  soil  and  thereby  swell  the  income 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  453 

of  the  islands.  For  instance,  about  the  densely  populated 
region  of  the  Gulf  of  Naples,  Procida  has  14,000  inhabitants 
on  its  one  and  a  half  square  miles  of  area,  while  fertile 
Ischia  and  Capri  have  1400  to  the  square  mile.  Here  a  rich 
volcanic  soil,  peaks  which  attract  rain  by  their  altitude  and 
visitors  by  their  beauty,  and  a  mild  oceanic  climate  delightful 
in  winter  as  in  summer,  all  contribute  to  density  of  popula- 
tion. Sicily,  Malta  and  Corfu  also  gain  in  the  same  way  in 
winter.  The  Isle  of  Man  owes  some  of  its  recent  increase  of 
population,  now  238  to  the  square  mile,  to  the  fact  that  it 
has  become  the  summer  playground  for  the  numerous  factory 
workers  of  Lancashire  in  England. 

Sometimes  climatic  advantages  are  reinforced  by  a  favor-  Density  of 
able  focal  point,  which  brings  the  profits  of  trade  to  supple-  population 
ment  those  of  agriculture.     This  factor  of  distributing  and  * 
exporting  center  has  undoubtedly  contributed  to  the  pros-  ^on  jor 
perity   and   population    of    Reunion,   Mahe,    Mauritius   and  trade. 
Zanzibar,  as  it  did  formerly  to  that  of  ancient  Rhodes  and 
modern  St.  Thomas  at  the  angle  of  the  Antilles.     Barbadoes, 
by  reason  of  its  outpost  location  to  the  east  of  the  Windward 
Isles,  is  the  first  to   catch   incoming  vessels   from  England, 
and  is  therefore  a  focus  of  steamship  lines  and  a  distributing 
point  for  the  southern  archipelago,  so  that  we  find  here  the 
greatest  density  of  any  island  in  the  West  Indies.155     The 
9405  inhabitants  of  Charlotte  Amalie  on  St.  Thomas  and  the 
15,000  of  Willemsted  on  Cura9ao  give  these  also  a  character- 
istic   insular    density.      Samos,    blessed    with    good    soil,    an 
excellent  position   on  Aegean  maritime   routes,  and  virtual 
autonomy,  supports  a  population  of  300  to  the  square  mile.15* 

Focal  location  alone  can  often  achieve  this  density.  Syros, 
one  of  the  smallest  and  by  nature  the  most  barren  of  the 
Cyclades,  though  well  tilled  is  the  great  commercial  and  ship- 
ping center  of  the  Aegean,  and  has  in  Hermupolis  with  its  17,- 
700  population  by  far  the  largest  town  of  the  archipelago.155 
This  development  has  come  since  Greece  achieved  its  inde- 
pendence. It  reminds  us  of  the  distinction  and  doubtless  also 
population  that  belonged  to  Delos  in  ancient  days.  Advan- 
tageous commercial  location  and  density  of  population  char- 
acterize Kilwauru  and  Singapore  at  the  east  and  west  extremi- 


454 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Overflow 
of  island 
population 
to  the 
mainland. 


ties  of  the  Malay  Archipelago.  The  Bahrein  Islands,  which 
England  has  acquired  in  the  Persian  Gulf,  serve  as  an  empo- 
rium of  trade  with  eastern  Arabia  and  have  a  local  wealth  in 
their  pearl  fisheries.  These  facts  account  for  the  68,000  in- 
habitants dwelling  on  their  240  square  miles  (600  square 
kilometers)  of  sterile  surface.15' 

The  concentration  of  population  in  these  favored  spots  of 
land  with  inelastic  boundaries,  and  the  tendency  of  that  popu- 
lation to  increase  under  the  stimulating,  interactive  life  make 
the  restriction  of  area  soon  felt.  For  this  reason,  so  many 
colonies  which  are  started  on  inshore  islets  from  motives  of 
protection  have  to  be  transferred  to  the  mainland  to  insure 
a  food  supply.  A  settlement  of  Huguenots,  made  in  1555 
on  an  island  in  the  harbor  of  Rio  Janeiro,  found  its  base  too 
small  for  cultivation,  but  feared  the  attack  of  the  hostile 
Indians  and  Portuguese  on  the  mainland.  After  three  years 
of  a  struggling  existence,  it  fell  a  prey  to  the  Portuguese.15' 
De  Monts'  short-lived  colony  on  an  island  in  the  mouth  of  the 
St.  Croix  River  in  1604  had  an  excellent  site  for  defence, 
but  was  cut  off  by  the  drifting  ice  in  winter  from  mainland 
supplies  of  wood,  water  and  game,  while  no  cultivation  was 
possible  in  the  sandy  soil.15* 

Such  sites  suffice  for  mere  trading  posts,  but  are  inade- 
quate for  the  larger  social  group  of  a  real  colony.  The 
early  Greek  colonists,  with  their  predilection  for  insular 
locations,  recognized  this  limitation  and  offset  it  by  the  oc- 
cupation of  a  strip  of  the  nearest  mainland,  cultivated  and 
defended  by  fortified  posts,  as  an  adjunct  to  the  support  of 
the  islands.  Such  a  subsidiary  coastal  hem  was  called  a 
Paraea.  The  ancient  Greek  colonies  on  the  islands  of  Thasos 
and  Samothrace  each  possessed  such  a  Paraea. 15£  The 
Aeolian  inhabitants  of  Tenedos  held  a  strip  of  the  opposite 
Troad  coast  north  of  Cape  Lekton,  while  those  of  Lesbos 
appropriated  the  south  coast  of  the  Troad. 16(  In  the  same 
way  Tarentum  and  Syracuse,  begun  on  inshore  islands,  soon 
overflowed  on  to  the  mainland.  Sometimes  the  island  site  is 
abandoned  altogether  and  the  colony  transferred  to  the  main- 
land. The  ancient  Greek  colony  of  Cyrene  had  an  initial 
existence  on  the  island  of  Platea  just  off  the  Libyan  coast, 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  455 

but,  not  flourishing  there,  was  moved  after  an  interval  of 
several  years  to  the  African  mainland,  where  "the  sky  was 
perforated"  by  the  mountains  of  Barca.161  De  Monis'  colony 
was  removed  from  its  island  to  Port  Royal  in  Nova  Scotia. 

Where  an  island  offers  in  its  climate  and  soil  conditions  Precocious 
favorable  to  agriculture,  tillage  begins  early  to  assume  an  d< 
intensive,  scientific  character,  to  supply  the  increasing  de-  igland  a^ 
mand  for  food.  The  land,  fixed  in  the  amount  of  area,  cuiture. 
must  be  made  elastic  in  its  productivity  by  the  application 
of  intelligence  and  industry.  Hence  in  island  habitats,  an 
early  development  of  agriculture,  accompanied  by  a  parallel 
skill  in  exploiting  the  food  resources  of  the  sea,  is  a  prevailing 
feature.  In  Oceanica,  agriculture  is  everywhere  indigenous, 
but  shows  greatest  progress  in  islands  like  Tonga  and  Fiji, 
where  climate  and  soil  are  neither  lavish  nor  niggardly  in 
their  gifts,  but  yield  a  due  return  for  the  labor  of  tillage. 
The  Society162  and  Samoan  Islands,  where  nature  has  been 
more  prodigal,  rank  lower  in  agriculture,  though  George 
Forster  found  in  Tahiti  a  relatively  high  degree  of  cultiva- 
tion.165 The  small,  rocky,  coralline  Paumotas  rank  lower 
still,  but  even  here  plantains,  sugar-cane,  sweet  potatoes, 
yams,  taro  and  solanum  are  raised.  The  crowded  atolls 
of  the  Gilbert  group  show  pains-taking  tillage.  Here  we 
find  coco-palms  with  their  roots  fertilized  with  powdered 
pumice,  and  taro  cultivated  in  trenches  excavated  for  the 
purpose  and  located  near  the  lagoons,  so  that  the  water  may 
percolate  through  the  coral  sand  to  the  thirsty  roots.16'1  To 
lonely  Easter  Isle  nature  has  applied  a  relentless  lash.  At 
the  time  of  Cook's  visit  it  was  woodless  and  boatless  except 
for  one  rickety  canoe,  and  therefore  was  almost  excluded 
from  the  food  supplies  of  the  sea.  Hence  its  destitute  natives, 
by  means  of  careful  and  often  ingenious  tillage,  made  its 
parched  and  rocky  slopes  support  excellent  plantations  of 
bananas  and  sugar-cane.16' 

The  islands  of  Melanesia  show  generally  fenced  fields, 
terrace  farming  on  mountain  sides,  irrigation  canals,  fertil- 
ized soils,  well  trimmed  shade  trees  and  beautiful  flower 
gardens,166  proof  that  the  cultivation  of  the  ground  has 
advanced  to  the  aesthetic  stage,  as  it  has  in  insular  Japan. 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Melan- 
esian  agri- 
culture. 


In  Tonga  the  coco-palm  plantations  are  weeded  aivl 
manured.  Here,  after  a  devastating  war,  the  victorious  chief 
devotes  his  attention  to  the  cultivation  of  the  land,  which 
soon  assumes  a  beautiful  and  flourishing  appearance.16'  In 
Tongatabu,  which  is  described  by  the  early  visitors  as  one 
big  garden,  Cook  found  officials  appointed  to  inspect  all 
produce  of  the  island  and  to  enforce  the  cultivation  of  a  cer- 
tain quota  of  land  by  each  householder.18'  Here  agriculture 
is  a  national  concern. 

In  the  minute  land  fragments  which  constitute  Micronesia, 
fishing  is  the  chief  source  of  subsistence;  agriculture, 
especially  for  the  all  important  taro,  is  limited  to  the  larger 
islands  like  the  Pelews.  In  the  vast  islands  of  western 
Melanesia,  agriculture  is  on  the  whole  less  advanced.  New 
Guinea,  where  the  chase  yields  support  to  many  villages, 
has  large  sections  still  a  wilderness,  though  some  parts  are 
cultivated  like  a  garden.  In  the  smaller  Melanesian  islands, 
such  as  New  Hebrides,  New  Britain  and  the  Solomon  group, 
we  find  extensive  plantations  laid  out  on  irrigated  terraces. 
In  New  Hebrides  and  the  Banks  Islands  every  single  village 
has  its  flowers  and  aromatic  herbs.165  But  it  is  in  Fiji  that 
native  island  agriculture  seems  to  culminate.  Here  a  race  of 
dark,  frizzly  haired  savages,  addicted  to  cannibalism,  have  in 
the  art  of  tillage  taken  a  spurt  forward  in  civilization,  till 
in  this  respect  they  stand  abreast  of  the  average  European. 
The  German  asparagus  bed  is  not  cultivated  more  carefully 
than  the  yam  plants  of  Fiji;  these  also  are  grown  in  mounds 
made  of  soil  which  has  been  previously  pulverized  by  hand. 
The  variety  and  excellence  of  their  vegetable  products  are 
amazing,  and  find  their  reflection  in  an  elaborate  national 
cuisine,  strangely  at  variance  with  the  otherwise  savage 
life.170 

West  of  Melanesia,  the  Malay  Archipelago  shows  a 
high  average  of  tillage.  The  inhabitants  of  Java,  Madura, 
Bali,  Lombok  and  Sumbawa  are  skilled  agriculturists  and  em- 
ploy an  elaborate  system  of  irrigation,171  but  the  natives  of 
Timor,  on  the  other  hand,  have  made  little  progress.  In  the 
Philippines  a  rich  and  varied  agriculture  has  been  the  chief 
source  of  wealth  since  the  Spanish  conquest  early  in  the 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  457 

sixteenth  century,  proving  a  native  aptitude  which  began  to 
develop  long  before.172 

The  dense  population  of  the  Mediterranean  islands  is  Intensive 
the  concomitant  of  an  advanced  agriculture.  The  connection  *&*&*' 
between  elaborate  tillage  and  scant  insular  area  is  indicated 
in  the  earliest  history  of  classic  Aegina.  The  inhabitants 
of  this  island  were  called  Myrmidons,  Strabo  tells  us,  because 
by  digging  like  ants  they  covered  the  rocks  with  earth 
to  cultivate  all  the  ground;  and  in  order  to  economize 
the  soil  for  this  purpose,  lived  in  excavations  under  ground 
and  abstained  from  the  use  of  bricks.173  To-day,  terraced 
slopes,  irrigation,  hand-made  soils,  hoe  and  spade  tillage, 
rotation  of  crops,  and  a  rich  variety  of  field  and  garden  pro- 
ducts characterize  the  economic  history  of  most  Mediter- 
ranean islands,  whether  Elba,  the  Lipari,  Ponza,  Procida, 
Capri,  Ischia,  Pantellaria,  Lampedusa,174  or  the  Aegean 
groups.  The  sterile  rock  of  Malta  has  been  converted  for 
two-thirds  of  its  area  into  fertile  gardens,  fields  and  orchards. 
The  upper  stratum  of  rock  has  been  pulverized  and  enriched 
by  manure ;  the  surface  has  been  terraced  and  walled  to  pro- 
tect it  against  high  winds.  In  consequence,  the  Maltese 
gardens  are  famous  throughout  the  Mediterranean.175  In 
the  Cyclades  every  patch  of  tillable  ground  is  cultivated  by 
the  industrious  inhabitants.  Terraced  slopes  are  green  with 
orchards  of  various  southern  fruits,  and  between  the  trees  are 
planted  melons  and  vegetables.  Fallow  land  and  uncultivated 
hillsides,  as  well  as  the  limestone  islands  fit  only  for  pastures, 
are  used  for  flocks  of  sheep  and  goats. 17e 

It  is  in  Japan  that  agriculture  has  attained  a  national  Japanese 
and  aesthetic  importance  reached  nowhere  else.  Of  the  150,-  agnculture« 
000  square  miles  constituting  Japan  proper,  two-thirds  are 
mountains ;  large  tracts  of  lowlands  are  useless  rock  wastes, 
owing  to  the  detritus  carried  down  by  inundating  mountain 
torrents.171  Hence  to-day  arable  land  forms  only  15.7  per 
cent,  of  the  whole  area.  During  the  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years  of  exclusion  when  emigration  and  foreign  trade  were 
forbidden,  a  large  and  growing  population  had  to  be  supplied 
from  a  small  insular  area,  further  restricted  by  reason  of  the 
configuration  of  the  surface.  Here  the  geographical  effects 


458  ISLAND  PEOPLES 

of  a  small,  naturally  defined  area  worked  out  to  their  logical 
conclusion.  Consequently  agriculture  progressed  rapidly 
and  gave  the  farmer  a  rank  in  tin  sort  1  <  Uc  such  as  he  at- 
tained nowhere  else.17'  His  methods  of  tillage  are  much  the 
same  as  in  overcrowded  China,  but  his  national  importance 
and  hence  his  ranking  in  society  is  much  higher.  In  Japan 
to-day  farming  absorbs  60  per  cent,  of  the  population.  The 
system  of  tillage,  in  many  respects  primitive,  is  yet  ver}r 
thorough,  and  by  means  of  skilful  manuring  makes  one  plot  of 
ground  yield  two  or  three  crops  per  annum.**1  Every  inch 
of  arable  land  is  cultivated  in  grain,  vegetables  and  fruits. 
Mountains  and  hills  are  terraced  and  tilled  far  up  their  slopes. 
Meadows  are  conspicuously  absent,  as  are  also  fallow  fields. 
Land  is  too  valuable  to  lie  idle.  Labor  is  chiefly  manual  and 
is  shared  by  the  women  and  children;  mattock  and  hoe  are 
more  common  than  the  plow.18<  Such  elaborate  cultivation 
and  such  pressure  of  population  eventuate  in  small  holdings. 
In  Japan  one  hectar  (21-2  acres)  is  the  average  farm  per 
family. 

The  case  While  Japan's  agriculture  reflected  the  small  area  of  an 

of  Eng-  island  environment,  and  under  its  influence  reached  a  high 
development,  England's  from  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth 
century  declined  before  the  competition  of  English  commerce, 
which  gained  ascendency  owing  to  the  easy  accessibility  of 
Great  Britain  to  the  markets  of  Europe.  The  ravages  of  the 
Black  Death  in  the  latter  half  of  the  fourteenth  century 
produced  a  scarcity  of  agricultural  laborers  and  hence  a 
prohibitive  increase  of  wages.  To  economize  labor,  the  great 
proprietors  resorted  to  sheep  farming  and  the  raising  of 
wool,  which,  either  in  the  raw  state  or  manufactured  into 
cloth,  became  the  basis  of  English  foreign  trade.  A  distinct 
deterioration  in  agriculture  followed  this  reversion  to  a  pas- 
toral basis  of  economic  life,  supplemented  by  a  growing 
commerce  which  absorbed  all  the  enterprise  of  the  country. 
The  steady  contraction  of  the  area  under  tillage  threw  out 
of  employment  the  great  mass  of  agricultural  laborers,  made 
them  paupers  and  vagrants.181  Hence  England  entered  the 
period  of  maritime  discoveries  with  a  redundant  population. 
This  furnished  the  raw  material  for  her  colonies,  and  made  her 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  459 

territorial  expansion  assume  a  solid,  permanent  character, 
unknown  to  the  flimsy  trading  stations  which  mark  the  mere 
extension  of  a  field  of  commerce. 

Even  when  agriculture,  fisheries  and  commerce  have  done  Emigration 
their  utmost,  in  the  various  stages  of  civilization,  to  increase  an .  colom~ 
the  food  supply,  yet  insular  populations  tend  to  outgrow  the  ,  . 
means  of  subsistence  procurable  from  their  narrow  base. 
Hence  islanders,  like  peninsula  peoples,  are  prone  to  emigrate 
and  colonize.  This  tendency  is  encouraged  by  their  mobility, 
born  of  their  nautical  skill  and  maritime  location.  King 
Minos  of  Crete,  according  to  Thucydides  and  Aristotle, 
colonized  the  Cyclades.18:  Greece,  from  its  redundant  popu- 
lation, peopled  various  Aegean  and  Ionian  islands,  which  in 
turn  threw  off  spores  of  settlements  to  other  isles  and  shores. 
Corcyra,  which  was  colonized  from  the  Peloponnesus,  sent 
eut  a  daughter  colony  to  Epidamnos  on  the  Illyrian  coast. 
Andros,  one  of  the  Cyclades,  as  early  as  654  B.  C»,  colonized 
Acanthus  and  Stagirus  in  Chalcidice.18;  Paros,  settled  first 
by  Cretans  and  then  by  lonians,  at  a  very  early  date  sent 
colonies  to  Thasos  and  to  Parium  on  the  Propontis,  while 
Samos  was  a  perennial  fountain  emitting  streams  of  settlement 
to  Thrace,  Cilicia,  Crete,  Italy  and  Sicily.  [Map  page  251.] 

This  moving  picture  of  Greek  emigration  is  duplicated  in 
the  Malay  Archipelago,  especially  in  the  smaller  eastern 
islands.  Almost  every  Malay  tribe  has  traditions  based  upon 
migrations.  The  southern  Philippines  derived  the  considerable 
Mohammedan  element  of  their  populations  from  the  Samal 
Laut,  who  came  from  Sumatra  and  the  islands  of  the  Strait 
of  Malacca.184  A  Malayan  strain  can  be  traced  through 
Polynesia  to  far-off  Easter  Isle.  Sometimes  the  emigration  is 
a  voluntary  exile  from  home  for  a  short  period  and  a  definite 
purpose.  The  inhabitants  of  Bouton,  Binungku,  and  the 
neighboring  islets,  all  of  them  located  southeast  of  Celebes, 
have  for  the  past  twenty-five  years  come  in  great  numbers  to 
the  larger  islands  of  Ceram,  Buru,  Amboina  and  Banda,  where 
they  have  laid  out  and  carefully  cultivated  plantations  of 
maize,  tobacco,  bananas  and  coco-palms.  Generally  only  the 
men  come,  work  two  years,  save  their  profits  and  then  return 
home.  These  ambitious  tillers  look  like  savages,  are 


460 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


Modern 
emigration 
from 
islands. 


shy  as  wild  things  of  the  woods,  and  work  naked  to  the  waist. 1"! 

Polynesia,  Melanesia  and  Micronesia,  where  every  condi- 
tion of  land  and  sea  tends  to  develop  the  migratory  spirit, 
form  a  region  of  extensive  colonization.18'  Settlements  of 
one  race  are  scattered  among  the  island  groups  of  another, 
making  the  ethnic  boundaries  wide  penumbras.  In  some 
smaller  islands  of  Melanesia  the  Polynesian  colonists  have 
exterminated  or  expelled  the  original  inhabitants,  and  are 
found  there  now  with  all  their  distinctive  race  characteristics ; 
but  in  the  larger  islands,  they  have  been  merged  in  the 
resident  population,  and  their  presence  is  only  to  be  surmised 
from  the  existence  of  Polynesian  customs,  such  as  father- 
right  in  New  Hebrides  and  Solomon  Island  side  by  side  with 
the  prevailing  Melanesian  mother-right.18'  In  small  islands, 
like  Tongatabu,  Samoa  and  Fiji,  emigration  becomes 
habitual,  a  gradual  spilling  over  of  the  redundant  popula- 
tion and  hence  not  a  formidable  inundation.  In  all  this 
insular  region  of  the  Pacific,  the  impulse  to  emigration  is  so 
persistent,  that  the  resulting  inter-insular  colonization 
obliterates  sharp  distinctions  of  race;  it  annuls  the  segrega- 
tion of  an  island  environment,  and  makes  everywhere  for 
amalgamation  and  unification,  rather  than  differentiation.18* 

Among  highly  civilized  peoples,  where  better  economic 
methods  bring  greater  density  of  population  and  set  at  the 
same  time  a  higher  standard  of  living,  emigration  from 
islands  is  especially  marked.  Japan  has  seen  a  formidable 
exodus  since  an  end  was  put  to  its  long  period  of  compression. 
This  has  taken  the  form  of  widespread  emigration  to  various 
foreign  lands,  notably  the  Hawaiian  Islands  and  the  United 
States,  and  also  of  internal  colonization  in  its  recently  ac- 
quired territory  in  Formosa  and  Korea.18'  The  Maltese 
have  spread  from  their  congested  island,  and  are  found  to-day 
as  gardeners,  sailors  and  traders  along  all  the  Mediterranean 
coasts.190  Majorca  and  the  more  barren  Cyclades191  tell  the 
same  story.  The  men  of  Capri  go  in  considerable  numbers 
to  South  America,  but  generally  return  home  again.  The 
Icelanders  often  pull  themselves  out  of  the  stagnation  of 
their  lonely,  ungenerous  island  to  become  thrifty  citizens  of 
western  Canada. 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  461 

Emigration  from  islands  readily  throws  itself  into  the  Maritime 
channel  of  navigation  and  foreign  trade.  The  northern  ei 
Sporades,  especially  Skiathos  and  Skopelos,  are  the  home  of 
sailors  who  can  be  found  over  all  the  world.191  In  this  ap- 
petency for  a  nautical  career,  small  inshore  islets  are  often 
distinguished  from  the  nearby  mainland.  Nearly  all  the 
masculine  population  of  the  Frisian  Islands  were  seamen 
prior  to  1807.  In  the  eighteenth  century  a  third  of  the  Ham- 
burg vessels  were  commanded  by  captains  from  the  little 
island  of  Sylte,  and  a  third  of  the  Greenland  fleet  of  the 
Netherlands  by  natives  of  Fohr.193 

In  England  the  exodus  took  the  form  of  trading  expedi- 
tions and  the  foundation  of  commercial  colonies  long  before 
the  food  resources  of  the  island  had  been  even  considerably 
developed.  The  accessible  sea  offered  lines  of  least  resistance, 
while  the  monopoly  of  the  land  by  a  privileged  aristocracy 
and  the  fiercely  defended  corn  laws  made  the  limitations  of 
a  small  area  more  oppressive.  In  Ireland,  a  landless  peas- 
antry in  a  grainless  land,  dulled  by  deprivation  of  oppor- 
tunity, found  in  emigration  an  escape  from  insupportable 
evils. 

While  emigration  draws  off  the  surplus  population,  there  Artificial 
tend  to  develop  in  islands,  as  also  in  barren  highlands  where  clieck8  to 
population  early  reaches  the  point  of  saturation,  various  ^°* 
devices  to  restrict  natural  increase.  The  evils  of  congestion 
are  foreseen  and  guarded  against.  Abbe  Raynal,  writing 
of  islanders  in  general,  remarked  as  far  back  as  1795,  "It 
is  among  these  people  that  we  trace  the  origin  of  that  multi- 
tude of  singular  institutions  which  retards  the  progress  of 
population.  Anthropophagy,  the  castration  of  males,  the 
infibulation  of  females,  late  marriages,  the  consecration  of 
virginity,  the  approbation  of  celibacy,  the  punishments  exer- 
cised against  girls  who  become  mothers  at  too  early  an  age," 
he  enumerates  as  such  checks.  Malthus,  in  his  Essay  on 
Population,  commenting  on  this  statement,  notes  that  the 
bounds  to  the  number  of  inhabitants  on  islands,  especially 
small  ones,  are  so  narrow  and  so  obvious  that  no  one  can 
ignore  them.19^ 

The  checks  to  population  practiced  on  islands  are  either 


462 


ISLAND  PEOPLES 


preventive  or  positive.  The  extreme  measure  to  restrict  mar- 
riage is  found  among  the  wretched  Budumas  who  inhabit 
the  small,  marshy  islands  of  Lake  Chad.  Tribal  custom 
allows  only  the  chiefs  and  headmen  to  have  wives.  A  brass 
crescent  inserted  in  the  ear  of  a  boy  indicates  the  favored  one 
among  a  chief's  sons  destined  to  carry  on  his  race.  For  his 
brothers  this  is  made  physically  impossible;  they  become 
big,  dull,  timid  creatures  contributing  by  their  fishing  to  the 
support  of  the  thinly  populated  villages.  The  natives  of 
the  Shari  River  delta  on  the  southern  shore  of  Lake  Chad 
use  Buduma  as  a  term  of  contempt  for  a  man.191 

Polyandry.  In  islands,  as  in  unproductive  highlands  where  hunger 

stalks  abroad,  marriage  readily  takes  the  form  of  polyandry. 
On  the  Canary  Islands,  at  the  time  of  their  conquest  in  1402, 
polyandry  existed  in  Lancerote  and  possibly  in  Fuerteven- 
tura,  often  assigning  one  woman  to  three  husbands ;  but  in 
the  other  islands  of  the  group  monogamy  was  strictly  main- 
tained.19' In  Oceanica  polygamy,  monogamy  or  polyandry 
prevails  according  to  a  man's  means,  the  poverty  of  the 
islands,  and  the  supply  of  women.  A  plurality  of  wives  is 
always  the  privilege  of  the  chiefs  and  the  wealthy,  but  all 
three  forms  of  marriage  may  be  found  on  the  same  island. 
Scarcity  of  women  gives  rise  to  polyandry  in  Tahiti,197 
and  consigns  one  woman  to  four  or  five  men.  In  old 
Hawaii,  where  there  were  four  or  five  men  to  one 
woman  a  kind  of  incipient  polyandry  arose  by  the  ad- 
dition of  a  countenanced  paramour  to  the  married  couple's 
establishment.19'  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  found  the  same 
complaisant  arrangement  a  common  one  in  the  Marquesas, 
where  the  husband's  deputy  was  designated  by  the  term  of 
pikio  in  the  native  vocabulary.191  Polyandry  existed  in 
Easter  Isle,  among  whose  stunted  and  destitute  population 
the  men  far  exceeded  the  women,  and  children  were  few, 
according  to  reports  of  the  early  visitors.20*  Numerous  other 
instances  make  this  connection  between  island  habitat,  de- 
ficiency of  women,  need  of  checking  increase,  and  polyandrous 
marriages  an  obvious  one.201 

Infanticide.  This  disproportion  of  the  sexes  in  Oceanica  is  due  to  the 
murder  of  female  infants,  too  early  child-bearing,  overwork, 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  463 

privation,  licentiousness,  and  the  violence  of  the  men.202  The 
imminence  of  famine  dictates  certain  positive  checks  to  popu- 
lation, among  which  infanticide  and  abortion  are  widespread 
in  Oceanica.  In  some  parts  of  the  New  Hebrides  and  the 
Solomon  groups  it  is  so  habitual,  that  in  some  families  all 
children  are  killed,  and  substitutes  purchased  at  will.202  In 
the  well-tilled  Fiji  Islands,  a  pregnant  girl  is  strangled  and  her 
seducer  slain.  The  women  make  a  practice  of  drinking  medi- 
cated waters  to  produce  sterility.  Failing  in  this,  the  majority 
kill  their  children  either  before  or  after  birth.  In  the  island  of 
Vanua  Levu  infanticide  reaches  from  one-half  to  two-thirds  of 
all  children  conceived ;  here  it  is  reduced  to  a  system  and  gives 
employment  to  professional  murderers  of  babies,  who  hover  like 
vultures  over  every  child-bed.  All  destroyed  after  birth  are 
females.204  And  yet  here,  as  on  many  other  islands  of 
Melanesia  and  Polynesia,  such  offspring  as  are  spared  are 
treated  with  foolish  fondness  and  indulgence.20'  The  two 
facts  are  not  incompatible. 

Geographic  conditions  made  infanticide  a  state  meas-  Approved 
ure  in  these  crowded  communities.  On  the  small  coral  ^ the 
atolls,  where  the  food  supply  was  scantest,  it  was  en- 
forced by  law.  On  Vaitupu,  in  the  Ellice  group,  only 
two  children  were  allowed  to  a  couple ;  on  Nukufelau, 
only  one.  Any  violation  of  this  unique  sumptuary  law  was 
punished  by  a  fine.206  On  the  congested  Gilbert  atolls,  a  woman 
rarely  had  more  than  two  children,  never  more  than  three. 
Abortion,  produced  by  a  regular  midwife,  disposed  of  any  sub- 
sequent offspring.  Affection  for  children  was  very  strong 
here,  and  infanticide  of  the  living  was  unknown.20'  In  Samoa, 
also,  Turner  found  the  practice  restricted  to  the  period  be- 
fore birth;  but  in  Tahiti  and  elsewhere  it  was  enforced  by 
the  tribal  village  authorities  on  the  born  and  unborn.205 
In  pre-Christian  Hawaii,  two-thirds  of  all  children,  and  es- 
pecially girls,  were  killed  by  their  parents  either  before  or 
after  birth.  The  result  was  a  decay  of  the  maternal  instinct 
and  the  custom  of  farming  out  children  to  strangers.  This 
contributed  to  the  excess  of  infant  mortality,  the  degenera- 
tion of  morals  and  the  instability  of  the  family.205  So  in 
Japan  the  pressure  of  population  led  to  infanticide  and  the 


464  ISLAND  PEOPLES 

sale  of  daughters  to  a  life  of  ignominy,  which  took  them 
out  of  the  child-bearing  class.21'  Nor  was  either  custom 
under  the  ban. 

The  result  is  a  deterioration  of  morals,  an  invasion  of  the 
family  bond,  and  a  decay  of  the  finer  sentiments  therewith 
connected.  Captain  Cook  in  1770  found  in  Tahiti  Eareeoie 
orArreoys  societies,  which  were  free-love  associations  includ- 
ing in  their  number  "over  half  of  the  better  sort  of  the  in- 
habitants." The  children  begotten  of  these  promiscuous 
unions  were  smothered  at  birth.  Obscene  conversations,  inde- 
cent dances  and  frank  unchastity  on  the  part  of  girls  and 
women  were  the  attendant  evils  of  these  loose  morals.213 
Cook  was  sure  that  "these  societies  greatly  prevent  the  in- 
crease of  the  superior  classes  of  people  of  which  they  are 
composed."  Malthus  reports  a  similar  association  in  the 
Marianne  Islands,  distinguished  by  a  similar  name,  devoted 
to  race  suicide.21'  Everywhere  in  Oceanica  marriage  is  un- 
stable, and  with  few  exceptions  unchastity  prevails.  Steven- 
son thinks  it  chiefly  accountable  for  the  decline  of  population 
in  the  islands. 2i:  However,  in  the  detailed  taboos  laid  upon 
women  in  Fiji,  Marquesas,  and  other  Polynesian  islands  we 
have  the  survival  of  an  early  measure  to  increase  reserve 
between  the  sexes,  long  after  regard  for  chastity  has 
vanished.214 

Low  val-  The  constant  pressure  of  population  upon  the  limits  of 

uation  of        subsistence  throughout  Oceanica  has  occasioned  a  low  valua- 
uman  tion    of  human    life.      Among   natural    peoples   the   helpless 

suffer  first.  The  native  Hawaiians,  though  a  good-natured 
folk,  were  relentless  towards  the  aged,  weak,  sick,  and  insane. 
These  were  frequently  stoned  to  death  or  allowed  to  perish 
of  hunger.21*  In  Fiji,  the  aged  are  treated  with  such  con- 
tempt, that  when  decrepitude  or  illness  threatens  them,  they 
beg  their  children  to  strangle  them,  unless  the  children  antici- 
pate the  request.216  In  Vate  (or  Efate)  of  the  New  Heb- 
rides, old  people  are  buried  alive,  and  their  passage  to 
another  world  duly  celebrated  by  a  feast.211  However,  in 
the  Tonga  Islands  and  in  New  Zealand,  great  respect  and 
consideration  are  shown  the  aged  as  embodying  experience.21' 
The  harsher  custom  recalls  an  ancient  law  of  Aegean  Ceos, 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  465 

which  ordained  that  all  persons  over  sixty  years  of  age  should 
be  compelled  to  drink  hemlock,  in  order  that  there  might  be 
sufficient  food  for  the  rest.219 

Many  customs  of  Oceanica  can  be  understood  only  in  the  Cannibal- 
lisht  of  the  small  value  attached  to  human  life  in  this  island  ^sm  *n 

*     1          A 

world.  The  overpopulation  which  lies  back  of  their  coloniza-  1£ 
tion  explains  the  human  sacrifices  in  their  religious  orgies 
and  funeral  rites,  as  also  the  widespread  practice  of 
cannibalism.  This  can  be  traced  in  vestigial  forms,  or  as  an 
occasional  or  habitual  custom  from  one  end  of  the  Pacific 
to  the  other,  from  the  Marquesas  to  New  Guinea  and  from 
New  Zealand  to  Hawaii.  All  Melanesia  is  tainted  with  it, 
and  Micronesia  is  not  above  suspicion.  The  cause  of  this 
extensive  practice,  Stevenson  attributes  to  the  imminence  of 
famine  and  the  craving  for  flesh  as  food  in  these  small  islands, 
which  are  destitute  of  animals  except  fowls,  dogs  and  hogs. 
In  times  of  scarcity  cannibalism  threatens  all;  it  strikes 
from  within  or  without  the  clan.22(  Ratzel  leans  to  the  same 
opinion.221  Captain  Cook  thought  the  motive  of  a  good  full 
meal  of  human  flesh  was  often  back  of  the  constant  warfare 
in  New  Zealand,  and  was  sometimes  the  only  alternative  of 
death  by  hunger.  Cannibalism  was  not  habitual  in  the  Tonga 
Islands,  but  became  conspicuous  during  periods  of  famine.222 
In  far-away  Tierra  del  Fuego,  where  a  peculiarly  harsh 
climate  and  the  low  cultural  status  of  the  natives  combine 
to  produce  a  frightful  infant  mortality  and  therefore  to  re- 
press population,  cannibalism  within  the  clan  is  indulged  in 
only  at  the  imperious  dictate  of  mid-winter  hunger.  The 
same  thing  is  true  in  the  nearby  Chonos  Archipelago.223 

These  are  the  darker  effects  of  an  island  habitat,  the  vices 
of  its  virtues.  That  same  excessive  pressure  of  population 
which  gives  rise  to  infanticide  also  stimulates  agriculture, 
industry  and  trade ;  it  develops  ingenuity  in  making  the  most 
of  local  resources,  and  finally  leads  to  that  widespread 
emigration  and  colonization  which  has  made  islanders  the 
great  distributors  of  culture,  from  Easter  Isle  to  Java  and 
from  ancient  Crete  to  modern  England. 


466  ISLAND  PEOPLES 


NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  XIII 

1.  Table  of  areas  of  peninsulas  and  islands,  Justus  Perthes,  Taschen 
Atlas,  p.  9.    Gotha,  1905. 

2.  H.  J.  Mackinder,  Britain  and  the  British  Seas,  pp.  105  108      Lon- 
don, 1904. 

3.  W.  Deecke,  Italy,  p.  45.     London,  1904. 

4.  Journey  of  William  de  Eubruquis,  pp.     187,  204.     Hakluyt  Society 
Publication,  London,  1903. 

5.  Archibald  Little,  The  Far  East,  pp.  35,  45.    Oxford,  1905. 

6.  Strabo,  Book  X,  chap.  II,  19. 

7.  Batzel,  Die  Erde  und  das  Leben,  VoL  I.  pp.  312-313.     Leipzig,  1901. 

8.  Charles   H.    Hawes,   In  the   Uttermost   East,   p.    103.     New   York, 
1904. 

9.  W.  E.  Griffis,  The  Mikado's  Empire,  Vol.  I,  pp.  26-27.     New  York, 
1904. 

10.  Darwin,  Origin  of  Species,  Vol.   II,  chap.   XIII,  p.    178.     New 
York,  1895. 

11.  A.  K.  Wallace,  Geographical  Distribution  of  Animals,  Vol.  II,  p. 
61.     London,  1876. 

12.  Darwin,   Origin   of   Species,   Vol.    II,   chap.    XIII,   p.    183.     New 
York,  1895. 

13.  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  chap.  XIII,  pp.  178-180. 

14.  A.  R.  Wallace,  Island  Life,  pp.  331-332,  338-389,  393,  402,  409-410, 
449,  456-463.    New  York,  1893. 

15.  Ibid.,  342,  370-371. 

16.  Emerson,  English  Traits,  chap.  VT. 

17.  Capt.  F.  Brinkley,  Japan,  Vol.  I,  p.  50.     Boston  and  Tokyo,  190L 

18.  W.  E.  Griffis,  The  Mikado's  Empire,  Vol.  I,  p.  198.     New  York, 
1904. 

19.  Arthur  M.  Knapp,  Feudal  and  Modern  Japan,  Vol.  I,  pp.  211,  220, 
221.    New  York,  1900. 

20.  Emerson,  English  Traits,  chap.  III. 

21.  Ronald  M    Burrows,  The  Discoveries  in  Crete,  pp.   134-136,  141, 
162,  177.     New  York,  1907. 

22.  Ibid.,  chapters  IV  and  V. 

23.  Ibid.,  p.  179.  Angelo  Mosso,  The  Palaces  of  Crete,  pp.  46,  54-55, 
61-62,  81.     London,  1907. 

24.  Ronald  M.  Burrows,  The  Discoveries  in  Crete,  pp.  64-65,  82,  84, 
147-150.    New  York,  1907.    James  Baikie,  The  Sea  Kings  of  Crete,  pp. 
235-237.    London,  1910. 

25.  J.  B.  Bury,  History  of  Greece,  pp.  8-10.    New  York,  1909. 

26.  R.  M.  Burrows,  The  Discoveries  in  Crete,  pp.  36,  44-46,  50-51,  85, 
149-150,  179.     New  York,  1907. 

27.  Ibid.,  136  137. 

28.  Private   communication   from   Mrs.    Harriet   Boyd    Hawes. 

29.  Recent   Discoveries   in  Crete,   The  Chautauquan,  Vol.   43,  p.   220. 
1906.     R.  M.  Burrows,  The  Discoveries  in  Crete,  pp.   103,   162.     New 
York,  1907. 

30.  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  244-245.     New  York,  1857. 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  467 

31.  Strabo,  Book  XIV,  chap.   II,   7-13. 

32.  Strabo,  Book  VII,  chap.  VI,  16. 

33.  A.  P.  Niblack,  Coast  Indians  of  Southern  Alaska  and  Northern 
British   Columbia,   pp.   382-384.      House   Misc.   Doc.    142.      Washington. 
Dr.  George  Dawson,  The  Haidas,  Harper's  Monthly,  August,  1882. 

34.  Katzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  180.     London,  1896-1898. 

35.  Article,  The  National  Academy  of  Sciences,  Nation,  Vol.  LXXX, 
p.  328.     1905.     Capt.  James  Cook,  A  Voyage  Towards  the  South  Pole, 
1772-1775,  Vol.  I,  p.  284,  288-296.  London.  1777.  George  Forster,  Voyage 
Bound  the  World,  Vol.  I,  pp.  566-567,  580-581,  586-591.     London,  1777. 

36.  G.  Sergi,  The  Mediterranean  Eace,  chap.  VII.     London  and  New 
York,  1901.     Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  222-223.     New 
York,  1902-1906. 

37.  Charles  W.  Hawes,  The  Uttermost  East,  pp.  113-116.     New  York, 
1904. 

38.  William  Bright,  Early  English  Church  History,  pp.  224-234.     Ox- 
ford.    1897.     P.  W.  Joyce,  Social  History  of  Ireland,  Vol.  I,  pp.  320, 
389,  390.     London,  1903. 

39.  W.  H.  Call,  Masks  and  Labrets,  p.  137.     Third  Annual  Eeport  of 
Bureau  of  Ethnology,  Washington,  1884. 

40.  A.   P.   Niblack,  Coast  Indians  of   Southern  Alaska  and  Northern 
British  Columbia,  pp.  236-382.     Washington. 

41.  H.  E.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  187.     New  York,  1902. 

42.  A.   B.   Ellis,   The  West  African   Islands,   p.   202.     London,   1885. 
History   of  the  Conquest   of  the  Canaries,  Introduction,  pp.   xin,   xvii, 
xxxiu,   xxxiv.     Hakluyt  Society,  London,  1872. 

43.  Henry  Gannett,  People  of  the  Philippines,  lleport  of  the   Eighth 
International  Geographical  Congress,  Washington,  1904. 

44.  H.  B.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  549.     New  York,  1903. 

45.  W.  Deecke,  Italy,  p.  451.     London,  1904. 

46.  Nelson  Annandale,  The  Faroes  and  Iceland,  p.  14.     Oxford,  1905. 

47.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,   Map,  p.   131,  and  p.   133.     London, 
1903. 

48.  W.  Z.  Eipley,  Eaces  of  Europe,  pp.  272,  304,  305,  317.    New  York, 
1899. 

49.  Ibid.,  p.  303. 

50.  Ibid.,  Map,  p.  251,  and  p.  253. 

51.  W.  Deecke,  Italy,  p.  451.     London,  1904. 

52.  Darwin,  Origin  of  Species,  Vol.  IE,  chap.  XIII,  pp.  179,  180,  184. 
New   York,    1895.     A.   E.   Wallace,   Island   Life,   pp.   284-285,   290-291. 
London  and  New  York,  1892. 

53.  H.  E.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  554.     New  York,  1902. 

54.  Eatzel,  Die  Erde  und  das  Leben,  Vol.  I,  p.  364.    Leipsig,  1901. 

55.  Eatzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  pp.  454-456.     London,   1896- 
1898.     H.  E.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.   1018.     New  York,  1902. 

56.  Eatzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  456.     London,  1896-1898. 

57.  Nordenskiold,  Voyage  of  the  Vega,  pp.  563,  588,  591.     New  York, 
1882. 

58.  A.  E.  Wallace,  Malay  Archipelago,  pp.  368,  380,  381.     New  York, 
1869. 

59.  Eichard   Semon,  In  the  Australian   Bush,  pp.   277-278.     London, 
1899. 


468  ISLAND  PEOPLES 

60.  Strabo,  Book  VIII,  chap.  VI,  16. 

61.  Pliny,  Naturalis  Historia,  Book  IV,  12. 

62.  Ibid.,  Book  VI,  chap.  32. 

63.  Hereford  George,  Historical  Geography  of  the  British  Empire,  pp. 
130-133.     London,  1904. 

64.  Dietrich    Schaefer,    Die   Hansestddte   und    Konig    Waldemar   von 
Danemark,  pp.  37-44.     Jena,  1879. 

65.  Hereford  George,  Historical  Geography  of  the  British  Empire,  pp. 
127-128.     London,  1904. 

66.  The  Danish  West  Indies,  pp.  2767,  2769.     Summary  of  Commerce 
and  Finance  for  January,  1902.    Washington. 

67.  E.  A.  Freeman,  Historical  Geography  of  Europe,  pp.  22,  29,  37,  65, 
77,  384,  412-415,  419,  426,  465.     London,  1882. 

68.  Ibid.,  35,  48,  49,  54-55,  80,  379,  382-385,  409,  411,  556,  557.     E.  A. 
Freeman,  Sicily,  chaps.  I,  II.     New  York  and  London,  1894. 

69.  W.  Deecke,  Italy,  pp.   132,  445.     London,   1904.     W.  Z.   Ripley, 
Eaces  of  Europe,  p.  271.     New  York,  1899. 

70.  Elis4e  Reclus,  Europe,  Vol.  I,  p.  320.    New  York,  1886. 

71.  W.  Deecke,  Italy,  pp.  448,  453.     London,  1904. 

72.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  367.    New  York,  1902. 

73.  David  Murray,  Story  of  Japan,  p.  156.    New  York,  1894. 

74.  Henry  Dyer,  Dai  Nippon,  p.  61.    New  York,  1904. 

75.  E.  A.  Freeman,  Historical  Geography  of  Europe,  pp.  55,  245,  252, 
857,  258,  264,  556.     London,  1882. 

76.  Thucydides  I,  114;  IV,  57-59,  62. 

77.  Ibid.,  IV,  120-122. 

78.  Aristotle,  Politics,  Book  XI,  chaps.  7,  8. 

79.  J.  T.  Bent,  The  Bahrein  Islands  in  the  Persian  Gulf,  Proceedings 
of  the  Boy.  Geog.  Soc.,  Vol.  XII,  p.  1.    London,  1890. 

80.  W.  F.  Walker,  The  Azores,  p.  22.     London,  1886. 

81.  A.  B.  Ellis,  West  African  Islands,  p.  203.     London,  1885. 

82.  Strabo,  Book  III,  chap.  V,  1. 

83.  H.  J.  Mackinder,  Britain  and  the  British  Seas,  pp.  10-12.    London, 
1904. 

84.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  301,  311.     New  York,  1899. 

85.  H.  B.   George,   Historical  Geography  of  the  British   Empire,  pp. 
100,  103,  104.     London,  1904. 

86.  J.  R.  Green,  The  Making  of  England,  Vol.  II,  pp.  30,  31,  35. 
London,  1904. 

87.  James  Bryce,  Holy  Roman  Empire,  p.  185.    London,  1890.    George 
Webbe  Daseut,  The  Story  of  Burnt  Njal,  or  Life  in  Iceland  at  the  End 
of  the  Tenth  Century,  Vol.  I,  pp.  LH-LXVIII.     Edinburgh,  1861. 

88.  Dahlmann,  Geschichte  von  Danemark.  Vol.  II,  pp.  265-268.     Ham- 
burg,   1857.      James    Bryce,    Introduction    to    Helmolt,    History    of    the 
World,  Vol.  I,  p.  xxii.  "  Xew  York,  1902. 

89.  George   T.    Stokes,   Ireland   and   the   Celtic   Church,   pp.    206-230. 
London,  1886. 

90.  J.  R.  Green,  History  of  the  English  People,  Vol.  I,  pp.  48-49. 

91.  Recent  Discoveries  in  Crete,  The  Chautauquan,  Vol.  XLIII,  p.  220. 
1906.     Angelo  Mosso,  The  Palaces  of  Crete,  p.  325.     London,  1907. 

92.  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  II,  pp.  496-504.     New  York, 
1902-6. 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  469 

93.  David  Murray,  Story  of  Japan,  p.  156.     New  York,  1894.     W.  E. 
York,  1902-6. 

Griffis,  The  Mikado's  Empire,  Vol.  I,  pp.  176-181.     New  York,  1903. 

94.  J.  R.  Green,  History  of  the  English  People,  Vol.  I,  pp.  30-33.    New 
York. 

95.  Capt.  F.  Brinkley,  Japan,  VoL  I,  p.  8.     Boston  and  Tokyo,  1901. 

96.  Capt.  A.  T.  Mahan,  Influence  of  Sea  Power  upon  History,  p.  29. 
New  York,  1902. 

97.  H.  J.  Mackinder,  Britain  and  the  British  Seas,  pp.  341,  343.    Lon- 
don, 1904. 

98.  Ratzel,  Die  Erde  und  das  Leben,  Vol.  I,  p.  362.     Leipzig,  1901. 

99.  W.  E.  Griffis,  The  Mikado's  Empire,  Vol.  I,  p.  258.     New  York, 
1903. 

100.  W.  F.  Walker,  The  Azores,  p.  2.     London,  1886. 

101.  F.   W.   Wines,  Punishment  and  Eeformation,  pp.   166-167,  184- 
188.     New  York,  1895. 

102.  Tacitus,  Annals,  Book  I,  chap.  XIII. 

103.  Ibid.,  Book  IV,  chaps.  Ill,  XV.     Book  II,  chap.  XIX. 

104.  W.  Deecke,  Italy,  pp.  270,  410,  413,  448,  450.     London,  1904. 

105.  Longmans  Gazetteer  of  the  World,  Article  Easter  Isle. 

106.  Dar\vin  and  Fitzroy,  Voyage  of  the  Beagle,  Vol.  II,  p.  59.    Lon- 
don, 1839. 

107.  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  490-492. 

108.  A.  B.  Ellis,  West  African  Islands,  pp.  1-3.     London,  1885. 

109.  Longmans  Gazetteer  of  the  World,  Andaman  and  Nicobar. 

110.  Darwin  and  Fitzroy,  Voyage  of  the  Beagle,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  245.  Lon- 
don, 1839. 

111.  A.  B.  Ellis,  West  African  Islands,  pp.  72,  73,  241.    London,  1885. 

112.  Charles  H.  Hawes,  The  Uttermost  East,  p.  345.     New  York,  1904. 

113.  The  Dry  Tortugas,  Harper's  Monthly,  Vol.  37,  p.  260.     1868. 

114.  A.  E.  Wallace,  Island  Life,  pp.  332,  371,  410,  457,  460-461,  464. 
London,  1892. 

115.  Ibid.,  pp.  407,  408,  410,  462. 

116.  Census  of  the  Philippine  Islands  of  1903,  Vol.  I,  p.  456.     Wash- 
ington, 1905. 

117.  Katzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  446,  449,  451.    London, 
1896-1898. 

118.  W.   E.   Griffis,   The  Mikado's  Empire,   Vol.   I,  pp.   30-31.     New 
York,  1903. 

119.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  p.  271.    New  York,  1899. 

120.  Hereford  George,   Historical  Geography  of  the  British  Empire, 
pp.   106-107.     London,  1904. 

121.  Nelson  Annandale,  The  Faroes  and  Iceland,  pp.  19,  20,  33,  37,  64- 
65,  148,  193-194,  198,  206,  208.     Oxford,  1905. 

122.  Capt.  James  Cook,  Voyage  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  1776-1780,  Vol.  II, 
pp.  69-70,  75-78.     New  York,  1796. 

123.  Williams  and  Calvert,  Fiji  and  the  Fijians,  pp.  5-7,  14,  15.     New 
York,  1859.     Basil  Thomson,  The  Fijians,  pp.  23-32.     London,  1908. 

124.  Mahler,  Siedelungsgebiete  und  Siedelungslage  in  Ozeanien.  Melch- 
ing  Staatenbildung  in  Melanesien,  Leipzig,  Dissertations,  1897. 

125.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  570.     New  York,  1902. 


470  ISLAND  PEOPLES 

126.  Aristotle,  Politics,  Book  II,  chap.  8. 

127.  Ratzel,    History   of    Mankind,    Vol.    I,   297-299.      London,    1896- 
1898. 

128.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  Map,  p.  145,  pp.  234,  251. 

129.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  204-214. 

130.  Justus  Perthes,  Taschen  Atlas,  p.  67.     Gotha,  1910. 

131.  Ibid.,  p.  60. 

132.  Ibid.,  p.  37. 

133.  Ibid.,  p.  51. 

134.  Ibid.,  pp.  37,  67. 

135.  Lippincott  's  New  Gazetteer  of  the  World,  Madeira  and  Azores. 

136.  R.  L.  Stevenson,  The  South  Seaa,  p.  37.     New  York,  1903. 

137.  Ibid.,  p.  222. 

138.  J.   8.  Jenkins,   United   States  Exploring  Squadron   under   Capt. 
Wilkes,  1838-1842,  pp.  401-403.     New  York,  1855. 

139.  Justus  Perthes,  Taschen  Atlas,  p.  70.     Gotha,  1905. 

140.  Eatzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  pp.  158,  179.     London,  1896- 
1898. 

141.  J.   S.   Jenkins,   United   States  Exploring   Squadron   under  Capt. 
Wilkes,  1838-1842,  p.  462.     New  York,  1855. 

142.  Ibid.,  p.  314. 

143.  Nelson  Annandale,  The  Faroes  and  Iceland,  pp.  93-129.     Oxford, 
1905. 

144.  Elisce  Reelus,  Europe,  VoL  IV,  p.  344.     New  York,  1886. 

145.  John  Murray,  Handbook  to  Greece  and  the  Ionian  Isles,  p.  329. 
London,  1872. 

146.  Hereford  George,  Historical  Geography  of  the  British  Empire,  p. 
119.    London,  1904. 

147.  W.  Deecke,  Italy,  pp.  449-450.     London,  1904. 

148.  Ibid.,  pp.  447-448,  410-411. 

149.  Statistics  from  Justus  Perthes,  Taschen  Atlas,  p.  65.  Gotha,  1910. 

150.  Longmans  Gazetteer  of  the  World,  Amboina. 

151.  Census  of  the  Philippine  Islands  of  1903.     Vol.  II,  p.  30.    Wash- 
ington, 1905. 

152.  Justus  Perthes,  Taschen  Atlas,  pp.  75,  77.    Gotha,  1910. 

153.  Hereford  George,  Historical  Geography  of  the  British  Empire,  pp. 
238-240.     London,  1904. 

154.  D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer  East,  pp.  243-244.    London,  1902. 

155.  Dr.  A.   Philippson,  The  Greek  Islands  of  the  Aegean,  Scottish 
Geographical  Magazine,  Vol.  XIII,  p.  489.     1897. 

156.  J.  T.  Brent,  The  Bahrein  Islands  in  the  Persian  Gulf,  Proceedings 
of  the  Soy.  Geog.  Society,  Vol.  XII,  pp.  1-19,  1890;  and  Justus  Perthes, 
Taschen  Atlas,  p.  55.    Gotha,  1910. 

157.  Parkman,    Pioneers   of    France   in   the   New    World,    pp.    26-32. 
Boston,  1900. 

158.  Ibid.,  pp.  253-262. 

159.  Thucydides,  I,  100,  101.     Herodotus,  VII,  108,  109. 

160.  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  195,  197.    New  York,  1857. 

161.  Ibid.,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  30  33. 

162.  Capt.  James  Cook,  Voyage  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  1776-1780,  Vol. 
II,  pp.  85-86,  88.     New  York.   1796. 


ISLAND  PEOPLES  471 

163.  George  Forster,  Voyage  Bound  the  World,  Vol.  I,  p.  274,  280,  281, 
285.     London,  1777. 

164.  J.   S.   Jenkins,  United   States  Exploring   Squadron  under   Capt. 
Wilkes,  1838- 1S42,  p.  402.     New  York,  1855. 

165.  George  Forster,  Voyage  Bound  the  World,  Vol.  I,  pp.  571,  578, 
587,  595.     London,  1777. 

166.  B.  H.  Codrington,  The  Melanesians,  pp.  303-304.    Oxford,  1891. 

167.  William  Mariner,  Natives  of  the  Tonga  Islands,  Vol.  II,  p.  30. 
Edinburgh,  1827. 

168.  Capt.  James  Cook,  Voyage  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  1776-1780,  Vol.  I, 
p.  302.    New  York,  1796. 

169.  Eatzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  pp.  254-256.     London,  1896- 
1898. 

170.  Williams  and  Calvert,  Fiji  and  the  Fijians,  pp.  8,  46-49.     New 
York,  1859.     Basil  Thomson,  The  Fijians,  p.  339.     London,  1908. 

171.  H.  B.  Mill,  International  Geography,  pp.  562,  564,  572.   New  York, 
1902. 

172.  Census  of  the  Philippine  Islands  of  1903,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  1-2.    Wash- 
ington,  1905. 

173.  Strabo,  Book  VIII,  chap.  VI,  16. 

174.  W.  Deecke,  Italy,  pp.  380,  448-450.     London,  1904. 

175.  Ibid.,  p.  452. 

176.  Dr.  A.  Philippson,  The  Greek  Islands  of  the  Aegean,  Sottish  Geo- 
graphical Magazine,  Vol.  XIII,  pp.  489-490.    1897.    John  Murray,  Hand- 
book to  Greece  and  the  Ionian  Isles.     London,  1872. 

177.  W.  E.  Griffis,  The  Mikado's  Empire,  Vol.  I,  pp.  17-20.    New  York, 
1904. 

178.  Henry    Dyer,    Dai    Nippon,    pp.     238-244.      New    York,    1903. 
Arthur  M.  Knapp,  Feudal  and  Modern  Japan,  Vol.  I,  pp.  78,  79,  116,  117. 
New  York,  1900. 

179.  Alfred  Stead,  Japan  by  the  Japanese,  p.  413.    London,  1904. 

180.  Sir  Rutherford  Alcock,  Three  Years  in  Japan,  Vol.  I,  pp.  83,  84, 
283-286.     New  York,  1868. 

181.  H.  D.  Traill,  Social  England,  Vol.  II,  pp.  243-246,  547-554;  Vol. 
Ill,  pp.  114-121,  239-241,  253-255,  351-359.     London,  1905. 

182.  Thucydides,  Book  1,  4.     Aristotle,  Politics,  Book  II,  chap.  7,  2. 
Herodotus,  Book  VII,  170. 

183.  Thucydides,  Book  IV,  chaps.  84,  88. 

184.  Census  of   the   Philippine  Islands   in   1903,  Vol.  I,  pp.   415-414. 
Washington,  1905. 

185.  Richard  Semon,  In  the  Australian  Bush,  p.  517.     London,  1899. 

186.  Batzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  pp.  174-177.    London,  1896-98. 

187.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  178-179. 

188.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  157-161,  165. 

189.  Henry  Dyer,  Dai  Nippon,  pp.  250-257,  266.     New  York,  1904. 

190.  Elisee  Reclus,  Europe,  Vol.  I,  p.  337.     New  York,  1886.     Here- 
ford George,  Historical  Geography  of  the  British  Empire,  pp.  118-119. 
London,  1904. 

191.  D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer  East,  p.  244.    London,  1902. 

192.  Dr.  A.  Philippson,  The  Greek  Islands  of  the  Aegean,  Scottish  Geo- 
graphical Magazine,  Vol.  XIII,  p.  488.     1897. 


472  ISLAND  PEOPLES 

193.  Jensen,  Die  Nordfrieschen  Inseln,  p.  133.  1891. 

194.  Maltbus,  Essay  on  Population,  Book  I,  chap.  V,  p.  67.     London, 
1826.     This  whole  chapter  on  "Checks  to  Population  in  the  Islands  of 
the  South  Seas ' '  is  valuable. 

195.  Boyd  Alexander,  From  the  Niger  to  the  Nile,  Vol.  II,  pp.  108-110. 
London,  1907. 

196.  History  of  the  Conquest  of  the  Canaries,   p.   xxxix.      Hakluyt 
Society,  London,  1872. 

197.  Batzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  pp.  273,  299-300.     London, 
1896-98. 

198.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  270,  274-275.     Adolf  Marcuse,  Die  Hawaiischen 
Inseln,  p.  108.    Berlin,  1894. 

199.  R.  L.  Stevenson,  The  South  Seas,  pp.  138-139.     New  York,  1903. 

200.  George  Forster,  Voyage  Round  the  World,  Vol.  I,  p.  564,  569,  572, 
677,  584,  586,  596.     London,  1777. 

201.  Westerraarck,  History  of  Human  Marriage,  pp.  116,  441,  462-463, 
450-452,  454,  457.    London,  1891. 

202.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  270.    London,  1896-1898. 

203.  R.  H.  Codrington,  The  Melanesians,  p.  229.     Oxford,  1891. 

204.  Basil  Thomson,  The  Fijians,  pp.  221-227.     London,   1908.     Wil- 
liams and  Calvert,  Fiji  and  the  Fijians,  pp.  132,  142.     New  York,  1859. 

205.  Ibid.,  p.  130.    R.  L.  Stevenson,  The  South  Seas,  pp.  38,  40.     New 
York,  1903. 

206.  Ibid.,  p.  38. 

207.  J.   S.   Jenkins,   United   States   Exploring   Squadron  under  Capt. 
Wilkes,  1838-1842,  pp.  404-405.     New  York,  1855. 

208.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  pp.  270,  299.  London,  1896-98. 

209.  Adolf  Marcuse,  Die  Hawaiischen  Inseln,  p.   109.     Berlin,  1894. 

210.  G.  W.  Knox,  Japanese  Life  in  Town  and  Country,  p.  188.     New 
York,  1905. 

211.  Capt.   Cook's   Journal,   First   Voyage   Round   the   World   in   the 
Endeavor,  1768-1771,  pp.  95,  96.    Edited  by  W.  J.  L.  Wharton.    London, 
1893. 

212.  Malthus,  Essay  on  Population,  Book  I,  chap.  V. 

213.  R.  L.  Stevenson,  The  South  Seas,  p.  39.     New  York,  1903. 

214.  Ibid.,  p.  52. 

215.  Adolf  Marcuse,  Die  Hawaiischen  Inseln,  p.  109.     Berlin,  1894. 

216.  Williams  and  Calvert,  Fiji  and  the  Fijians,  pp.  144-146.     New 
York,  1859. 

217.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  330.     London,  1896  1898. 

218.  William  Mariner,  Natives  of  the  Tonga  Islands,  Vol.  II,  pp.  95, 
134-135.     Edinburgh,  1827.     Capt.  Cook's  Journal,  First  Voyage  Round 
the  World  in  the  Endeavor,  1768-1771,  pp.  220-221.     Edited  by  W.  J.  L. 
Wharton.    London,  1893. 

219.  Strabo,  Book  X,  chap.  V,  6. 

220.  R.  L.  Stevenson,  The  South  Seas,  pp.  98-104.     New  York,  1903. 

221.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  pp.  297-299.     London,  1896- 
1898. 

222.  William  Mariner,  Natives  of  the  Tonga  Islands,  Vol.  II,  pp.  108- 
109.     Edinburgh,  1827. 

223.  Darwin  and  Fitzroy,  Voyage  of  the  Beagle,  Vol.  II,  pp.  183,  189- 
190.     London,  1839. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY  has  to  do  primarily  with  the  forms  Relief  of 
and  relief  of  the  land.  The  relief  of  the  sea  floor  influences  the  sea 
man  only  indirectly.  It  does  this  by  affecting  the  forms  of  floor- 
the  coast,  by  contributing  to  the  action  of  tides  in  scouring  out 
river  estuaries,  as  on  the  flat  beaches  of  Holland  and  Eng- 
land, by  determining  conditions  for  the  abundant  littoral 
life  of  the  sea,  the  fisheries  of  the  continental  shelf 
which  are  factors  in  the  food  quest  and  the  distri- 
bution of  settlements.  Moreover,  the  ocean  floor  enters  into 
the  problem  of  laying  telegraph  cables,  and  thereby  assumes 
a  certain  commercial  and  political  importance.  The  name  of 
the  Telegraph  Plateau  of  the  North  Atlantic,  crossed  by 
three  cables,  points  to  the  relation  between  these  and  sub- 
marine relief.  So  also  does  the  erratic  path  of  the  cable  from 
southwestern  Australia  to  South  Africa  via  Keeling  Island 
and  Mauritius. 

Submarine  reliefs  have  yet  greater  significance  in  their 
relation  to  the  distribution  of  the  human  race  over  the  whole 
earth;  for  what  is  now  a  shallow  sea  may  in  geologically 
recent  times  have  been  dry  land,  on  which  primitive  man 
crossed  from  continent  to  continent.  It  is  vital  to  the  theory 
of  the  Asiatic  origin  of  the  American  Indian  that  in  Miocene 
times  a  land  bridge  spanned  the  present  shallows  of  Bering 
Sea.  Hence  the  slight  depth  of  this  basin  has  the  same  bio- 
geographical  significance  as  that  of  the  British  seas,  the 
waters  of  the  Malay  Archipelago,  and  the  Melanesian  sub- 
marine platform.  The  impressive  fact  about  "Wallace's 
Line"  is  the  depth  of  the  narrow  channel  which  it  follows 
through  Lombok  and  Macassar  Straits  and  which,  in  recent 
geological  times,  defined  the  southeastern  shore  of  Asia. 
In  all  these  questions  of  former  land  connection,  anthropo- 
geography  follows  the  lead  of  bio-geography,  whose  deduc- 


474 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 


Mean  ele- 
vations of 
the  con- 
tinents. 


tions,  based  upon  the  dispersal  of  countless  plant  and  animal 
forms,  point  to  the  paths  of  human  distribution. 

The  mean  elevation  of  the  continents  above  sea  level  indi- 
cates the  average  life  conditions  of  their  populations  as  de- 
pendent upon  relief.  The  1010  meters  (3313  feet)  of  Asia 
indicate  its  predominant  highland  character.  The  330  meters 
(1080  feet)  representing  the  average  height  of  Europe,  and 
the  310  meters  (1016  feet)  of  Australia  indicate  the  prepon- 
derance of  lowlands.  Nevertheless,  anthropo-geography 
rarely  lends  itself  to  a  mathematical  statement  of  physical 
conditions.  Such  a  statement  only  obscures  the  facts.  The 
660  meters  (2164?  feet)  mean  elevation  of  Africa  indicates  a 
relief  higher  than  Europe,  but  gives  no  hint  of  the  plateau 
character  of  the  Dark  Continent,  in  which  lowlands  and 
mountains  are  practically  negligible  features ;  while  the 
almost  identical  figure  (650  meters  or  2132  feet)  for  both 
North  and  South  America  is  the  average  derived  from  exten- 
sive lowlands  in  close  juxtaposition  to  high  plateaus  capped 
by  lofty  mountain  ranges.  Such  mathematical  generaliza- 
tions indicate  the  general  mass  of  the  continental  upheaval, 
but  not  the  way  this  mass  is  divided  into  low  and  high  reliefs.1 

The  method  of  anthropo-geography  is  essentially  analytical, 
and  therefore  finds  little  use  for  general  orometric  statements, 
which  may  be  valuable  to  the  science  of  geo-morphology  with 
its  radically  different  standpoint.  For  instance,  geo-mor- 
phology may  calculate  from  all  the  dips  and  gaps  in  the 
crest  of  a  mountain  range  the  average  height  of  its  passes. 
Anthropo-geography,  on  the  other  hand,  distinguishes  be- 
tween the  various  passes  according  as  they  open  lines  of 
greater  or  less  resistance  to  the  historical  movement  across 
the  mountain  barriers.  It  finds  that  one  deep  breach  in  the 
mountain  wall,  like  the  Mohawk  Depression2  and  Cumberland 
Gap  in  the  Appalachian  system,3  Truckee  Pass  in  the  Sierra 
Nevada4  and  the  Brenner  in  the  Alps,5  has  more  far-reaching 
and  persistent  historical  consequences  than  a  dozen  high-laid 
passes  that  only  notch  the  crest.  Pack-trail,  road  and  rail- 
road seek  the  former,  avoid  the  latter;  one  draws  from  a 
wide  radius,  while  the  other  serves  a  restricted  local  need. 
Therefore  anthropo-geography,  instead  of  clumping  the 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  475 

passes,  sorts  them  out,  and  notes  different  relations  in  each. 

In  continents  and  countries  the  anthropo-geographer  looks  Distribu- 
te see  not  what  reliefs  are  present,  but  how  they  are  dis-  tion  of  re- 
tributed;  whether  highlands  and  lowlands  appear  in  un-  Uefs' 
broken  masses  as  in  Asia,  or  alternate  in  close  succession  as 
in  western  Europe;  whether  the  transition  from  one  to  the 
other  is  abrupt  as  in  western  South  America,  or  gradual  as 
in  the  United  States.  A  simple  and  massive  land  structure 
lends  the  same  trait  of  the  simple  and  massive  to  every  kind 
of  historical  movement,  because  it  collects  the  people  into 
large  groups  and  starts  them  moving  in  broad  streams,  as  it 
were.  This  fact  explains  the  historical  preponderance  of 
lowland  peoples  and  especially  of  steppe  nomads  over  the 
small,  scattered  groups  inhabiting  isolated  mountain  valleys. 
The  island  of  Great  Britain  illustrates  the  same  principle  on 
a  small  scale  in  the  turbid,  dismembered  history  of  independ- 
ent Scotland,  with  its  Highlanders  and  Lowlanders,  its  tribes 
and  clans  separated  by  mountains,  gorges,  straits,  and 
fiords,8  in  contrast  to  the  smoother,  unified  course  of  history 
in  the  more  uniform  England.  Carl  Ritter  compares  the  dull 
uniformity  of  historical  development  and  relief  in  Africa  with 
the  variegated  assemblage  of  highlands  and  lowlands,  nations 
and  peoples,  primitive  societies  and  civilized  states  in  the 
more  stimulating  environment  of  Asia.7 

The    chief    features    of    mountain    relief    reappear    on    a  Homolo- 
large  scale  in  the  continents,  which  are  simply  big  areas  of  ^ 
upheaval  lifted  above  sea  level.     The  continents  show  there-  Ogou8  ^3- 
fore  homologous  regions  of  lowlands,  uplands,  plateaus  and  tones, 
mountains,  each  district  sustaining  definite  relations  to  the 
natural  terrace  above  or  below  it,  and  displaying  a  history 
corresponding  to  that  of  its  counterpart  in  some  distant  part    ^v 
of  the  world,  due  to  a  similarity  of  relations.     This  appears 
first  in  a  specialization  of  products  in  each  tier  and  hence 
in  more  or  less  economic  interdependence,  especially  where  civ- 
ilization is  advanced.  The  tendency  of  conquest  to  unite  such 
obviously  complementary  districts  is  persistent.     Hence  the 
Central   Highland   of  Asia   is   fringed  with  low  peripheral 
lands  like  Manchuria,  China,  India  and  Mesopotamia,  into 
whose  history  it  has  repeatedly  entered  as  a  disturbing  force. 


476          PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

All  the  narrow  Pacific  districts  of  the  Americas  from  Alaska 
to  Patagonia  are  separated  by  the  Cordilleras  from  the  low- 
lands on  the  Atlantic  face  of  the  continents ;  all  reveal  in 
their  history  the  common  handicap  arising  from  an  over- 
whelming preponderance  of  plateau  and  mountain  and  a 
paucity  of  lowlands.  Colombia,  Ecuador  and  Peru  have  in 
the  past  century  been  stretching  out  their  hands  eastward  to 
grasp  sections  of  the  bordering  Amazon  lowlands,  where  to- 
day is  the  world's  great  field  of  conflicting  boundary  claims. 
Chile  would  follow  its  geographical  destiny  if  it  should  sup- 
plement its  high,  serrated  surface  by  the  plateaus  and  low- 
lands of  Bolivia,  as  Cyrus  the  Persian  married  the  Plateau  of 
Iran  to  the  plains  of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  and  Romulus 
joined  the  Alban  hills  to  the  alluvial  fields  of  the  Tiber. 
Anthropo-  Well-watered  lowlands  invite  expansion,  ethnic,  commer- 

geography       cial  and  political.      In  them  the  whole  range  of  historical 
of  low-  movements  meet  few  obstacles  beyond  the  waters  gathering 

in  their  runnels  and  the  forests  nourished  in  their  rich  soils. 
Limited  to  200  meters  (660  feet)  elevation,  lowlands  develop 
no  surface  features  beyond  low  hills  and  undulating  swells 
of  land.  Uniformity  of  life  conditions,  monotony  of 
climate  as  of  relief,  except  where  grades  of  latitude  intervene 
to  chill  or  heat,  an  absence  of  natural  boundaries,  and  con- 
stant encouragement  to  intercourse,  are  the  anthropo-geo- 
graphic  traits  of  lowlands,  as  opposed  to  the  arresting,  de- 
taining grasp  of  mountains  and  highland  valleys.  Small, 
isolated  lowlands,  like  the  mountain-rimmed  plains  of  Greece 
and  the  Aegean  coast  of  Asia  Minor,  the  Nile  flood-plain, 
Portugal,  and  Andalusia  in  Spain,  may  achieve  precocious 
and  short-lived  historical  importance,  owing  to  the  fertility 
of  their  alluvial  soils,  their  character  as  naturally  defined 
districts,  and  their  advantageous  maritime  location ;  but 
while  in  these  restricted  lowlands  the  telling  feature  has  been 
their  barrier  boundaries  of  desert,  mountains  and  sea,  the  vast 
level  plains  of  the  earth  have  found  their  distinctive  and 
lasting  historical  importance  in  the  fact  of  their  large  and 
unbounded  surface. 

Such  plains  have  been  both  source  and  recipient  of  every 
form  of  historical  movement.     Owing  to  their  prevailing  fit- 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  477 

ness  for  agriculture,  trade  and  intercourse,  they  are  favored 
regions  for  the  final  massing  of  a  sedentarj-  population. 
The  areas  of  greatest  density  of  population  in  the  world, 
harboring  150  or  more  to  the  square  kilometer  (385  to  the 
square  mile),  are  found  in  the  lowlands  of  China,  the  alluvial 
plains  of  India,  and  similar  level  stretches  in  the  Neapolitan 
plain  and  Po  Valley,  the  lowlands  of  France,  Germany,  Hol- 
land, Belgium,  England  and  Scotland.  Such  a  density  is 
found  in  upland  districts  (660  to  2000  feet,  or  200  to  600 
meters)  bordering  agricultural  lowlands,  only  where  in- 
dustries based  upon  mineral  wealth  cause  a  concentration 
of  population.  [See  maps  pages  8,  9,  559.] 

The  level  or  undulating  surface  of  extensive  lowlands  is  * 
not  favorable  to  the  early  development  of  civilization.  Not  ?  , . 
only  do  their  wide  extent  and  absence  of  barriers  postpone  t0  eariy 
the  transition  from  nomadism  to  sedentary  life,  but  their  velopment. 
lack  of  contrasting  environments  and  contrasted  develop- 
ments, which  supplement  and  stimulate,  puts  chains  upon 
progress.  A  flat,  monotonous  relief  produces  a  monotonous 
existence,  necessarily  one-sided,  needing  a  complement  in  up- 
land or  mountain.  To  the  pioneer  settlers  in  the  lowlands  of 
Missouri  the  Ozark  Plateau  was  a  boon,  because  its  streams 
furnished  water-power  for  much  needed  saw  and  flour  mills. 
Treeless  Egypt  even  before  2500  B.  C.  depended  upon  the 
cedars  of  the  Lebanon  Mountains  for  the  construction  of  its 
ships ;  so  that  the  conquest  of  Lebanon,  begun  by  Thutmose 
I.  and  completed  by  Thutmose  III.  in  about  14^0  B.  C.,  had 
a  sound  geographical  basis.8  Similarly  the  exploitation  of 
the  copper,  malachite,  turquoise  and  lapis-lazuli  of  Mount 
Sinai,  minerals  not  found  in  the  Nile  plain,  led  the  ancient 
Egyptians  into  extensive  mining  operations  there  before 
3000  B.  C.,  and  resulted  in  the  establishment  of  Egyptian 
political  supremacy  in  2900  B.  C.,  as  a  measure  to  protect 
the  mines  against  the  depredations  of  the  neighboring 
Bedouin  tribes.9  Lowlands  lack  the  distinctive  advantages 
of  highlands  found  in  diversity  of  climate,  water-power, 
generally  in  more  abundant  forests  and  minerals.  The  latter 
are  earlier  discovered  and  worked  in  the  tilted  strata  of  moun- 
tains and  uplands. 


478 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 


Conditions 
for  fusion 
in  plains. 


Plain  countries  suffer  particularly  from  a  paucity  of  varied 
geographic  conditions  and  of  resulting  contrasts  in  their 
population.  Their  national  characters  tend  to  be  less  richly 
endowed;  their  possibilities  for  development  are  blighted  or 
retarded,  because  even  racial  differences  are  rapidly  obliter- 
ated in  the  uniform  geographic  environment.  A  small  diver- 
sified country  like  Crete,  Great  Britain,  Italy,  Portugal, 
Saxony,  or  Japan,  is  a  geographical  multum  in  parvo.  The 
western  half  of  Europe  bears  the  same  stamp,  endowing  each 
country  and  nation  with  marked  individuality  born  of  partial 
isolation  and  a  varied  combination  of  environment.  The 
larger  eastern  half  of  the  continent  embraced  in  the  plains 
of  Poland  and  Russia  shows  monotony  in  every  aspect  of 
human  life.  This  comes  out  anthropologically  in  the  striking 
similarity  of  head-form  found  everywhere  north  and  east  of 
the  Carpathian  Mountains,  except  in  the  secluded  districts 
of  Lithuania  and  Crimea,  which  shelter  remnants  of  distinct 
races.  Over  all  this  vast  territory  the  range  of  cephalic 
variation  is  only  five  units  or  one-third  that  in  the  restricted 
but  diversified  territory  of  western  Europe.  Italy,  only  one- 
eighteenth  the  size  of  European  Russia,  has  a  range  of  fifteen 
units,  reflecting  in  the  variety  of  its  human  types  the  diversity 
of  its  environment.10 

In  the  plains  geography  makes  for  fusion.  Russia  shows 
this  marked  homogeneity,  despite  a  motley  collection  of  race 
ingredients  which  have  entered  into  the  make-up  of  the  Rus- 
sian people.  Without  boundary  or  barrier,  the  country  has 
stood  wide  open  to  invasion;  but  the  intruders  found  no 
secluded  corners  where  they  could  entrench  themselves  and 
preserve  their  national  individuality.11  They  dropped  into  a 
vast  melting-pot,  which  has  succeeded  in  amalgamating  the 
most  diverse  elements.  The  long-drawn  Baltic-North  Sea 
plain  of  Europe  shows  the  same  power  to  fuse.  Here  is  found 
a  prevailing  blond,  long-headed  stock  from  the  Gulf  of  Fin- 
land to  the  Somme  River  in  France.12  Yet  this  natural  boule- 
vard has  been  a  passway  for  races.  Prehistoric  evidences 
show  that  the  dark,  broad-headed  Celtic  folk  once  overspread 
this  plain  east  to  the  Weser;13  it  still  tends  to  trickle  down 
from  the  southern  uplands  into  the  Baltic  lowland,  and  modify 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  479 

the  Teutonic  type  along  its  southern  margin  throughout  Ger- 
many.14 The  Slavs  in  historic  times  reached  as  far  west  as 
the  Weser,  while  the  expansion  of  the  Teutons  has  embraced 
the  whole  maritime  plain  from  Brittany  to  the  Finnish  Gulf. 
Here  it  is  difficult  to  draw  an  ethnic  boundary  on  the  basis  of 
physical  differences.  The  eastern  Prussians  are  Slavonized 
Teutons,  and  the  adjacent  Poles  seem  to  be  Teutonized  Slavs, 
while  the  purest  type  of  Letto-Lithuanian  at  the  eastern 
corner  of  the  Baltic  coast  approximates  closely  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  type  which  sprang  from  the  western  corner.15  A 
similar  amalgamation  of  races  and  peoples  has  taken  place 
in  the  lowlands  of  England  and  Scotland,  while  diversity  still 
lingers  in  the  highlands.  In  the  Lowlands  of  Scotland,  Picts 
in  small  numbers,  Britons,  Scots  from  Ireland,  Angles,  Fri- 
sians, Northmen  and  Danes  have  all  been  blended  and  as- 
similated in  habits,  customs  and  speech.16 

This    uniformity    is    advantageous    to    early    development  Retarda- 
in    a    small    plain,    because    of    the    juxtaposition    of    con-  ^on  ^ue  to 

trasted  environments,  but  is  stultifying  to  national  life  in  an  n 

.  .  environ- 

immense  expanse   of  monotony  like  that   of  Russia.      Here  ment 

sameness  leaves  its  stamp  on  everything.  Language  is  differ- 
entiated with  only  two  dialects,  that  of  the  Great  Russians 
of  the  north  and  the  Little  Russians  of  the  southern  steppes, 
who  were  so  long  exposed  to  Tartar  influences.  Most  other 
languages  of  Europe,  though  confined  to  much  smaller  areas, 
show  far  greater  diversity.17  While  the  Russian  of  Kazan 
or  Archangel  can  converse  readily  with  the  citizen  of  Riga 
or  St.  Petersburg,  Germans  from  highland  Bavaria  and 
Swabia  are  scarcely  intelligible  to  Prussian  and  Mecklen- 
berger.  And  whereas  Germany  a  few  decades  ago  could 
count  over  a  hundred  different  kinds  of  national  dress  or 
Tracht,  Great  Russia  alone,  with  six  times  the  area,  had  only 
a  single  type  with  perhaps  a  dozen  slight  variations.  Leroy- 
Beaulieu  comments  upon  this  eternal  sameness.  "The  cities 
are  all  alike ;  so  are  the  peasants,  in  looks,  habits,  in  mode  of 
life.  In  no  country  do  people  resemble  one  another  more ;  no 
other  country  is  so  free  from  political  complexity,  those  op- 
positions in  type  and  character,  which  even  yet  we  encounter 
in  Italy  and  Spain,  in  France  and  Germany.  The  nation  is 


480          PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

made  in  the  likeness  of  the  country ;  it  shows  the  same  unity, 
we  might  say  the  same  monotony,  as  the  plains  on  which  it 
dwells." 

Influence  The  more  flat  and  featureless  a  lowland  is,  the  more  im- 

of  toils  portant  become  even  the  slightest  surface  irregularities  which 

can  draw  faint  dividing  lines  among  the  population.  Here 
a  gentle  land-swell,  river,  lake,  forest,  or  water-soaked  moor 
serves  as  boundary.  Especially  apparent  is  the  differentiating 
influence  of  difference  of  soils.  Gravel  and  alluvium,  sand 
and  clay,  chalk  and  more  recent  marine  sediments,  empha- 
size small  geographical  differences  throughout  the  North 
German  lowland  and  its  extension  through  Belgium  and  Hol- 
land ;  here  various  soils  differentiate  the  distribution  of  popu- 
lation. In  the  Netherlands  we  find  the  Frisian  element  of  the 
Dutch  people  inhabiting  chiefly  the  clay  soils  and  low  fens  of 
the  west  and  northwest,  the  Saxon  in  the  diluvial  tracts  of  the 
east,  and  the  Prankish  in  the  river  clays  and  diluvium  of  the 
south.  All  the  types  have  maintained  their  differences  of 
dialect,  styles  of  houses,  racial  character,  dress  and  custom.18 
The  only  distinctive  region  in  the  great  western  lowland  of 
France,  which  comprises  over  half  of  the  country,  is  Brittany, 
individualized  in  its  people  and  history  by  its  peninsula  form, 
its  remote  western  location,  and  its  infertile  soil  of  primary 
rocks.  Within  the  sedimentary  trough  of  the  Paris  Basin, 
a  slight  Cretacean  platform  like  the  meadow  land  of  Perche19 
(200  to  300  meters  elevation)  introduces  an  area  of  thin 
population  devoted  to  horse  and  cattle  raising  in  close  prox- 
imity to  the  teeming  urban  life  of  Paris.  The  eastern  low- 
land of  England  also  can  be  differentiated  economically  and 
historically  chiefly  according  to  differences  of  underlying 
rocks,  Carboniferous,  Triassic,  Jurassic,  chalk,  boulder  clays, 
and  alluvium,  which  also  coincide  often  with  slight  variations 
of  relief.20  In  Russia  the  contrast  between  the  glaciated 
surface  of  the  north  and  the  Black  Mould  belt  of  the  south 
makes  the  only  natural  divisions  of  that  vast  country,  unless 
we  distinguish  also  the  arid  southeastern  steppes  on  the  basis 
of  a  purely  climatic  difference.  [See  map  page  484.] 

The  broad  coastal  plain  of  our  South  Atlantic  States  con- 
tains only  low  reliefs,  but  it  is  diversified  by  several  soil 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  481 

belts,  which  exert  a  definite  control  over  the  industries  of  the 
inhabitants,  and  thereby  over  the  distribution  of  the  negro 
population.  In  Georgia,  for  instance,  the  rich  alluvial  soil 
of  the  swampy  coast  is  devoted  to  the  culture  of  rice  and  sea- 
island  cotton,  and  contains  over  60  per  cent,  of  negroes  in 
its  population.  This  belt,  which  is  only  25  miles  wide,  is  suc- 
ceeded inland  by  a  broader  zone  of  sandy  pine  barrens,  where 
the  proportion  of  negroes  drops  to  only  20  or  30  per  cent, 
of  the  total.  Yet  further  inland  is  another  fertile  belt,  de- 
voted chiefly  to  the  cultivation  of  upland  cotton  and  harbor- 
ing from  35  to  over  60  per  cent,  of  negroes  in  its  popula- 
tion.21 Alabama  shows  a  similar  stratification  of  soils  and 
population  from  north  to  south  over  its  level  surface.  Along 
the  northern  border  of  the  state  the  cereal  belt  coincides  with 
the  deep  calcareous  soil  of  the  Tennessee  River  Valley,  where 
negroes  constitute  from  35  to  60  per  cent,  of  the  inhabitants. 
Next  comes  the  mineral  belt,  covering  the  low  foot-hills  of 
the  Appalachian  Mountains.  It  contains  the  densest  popu- 
lation of  the  state,  less  than  17  per  cent,  of  which  is  negro. 
South  of  this  is  the  broad  cotton  belt  of  various  rich  soils, 
chiefly  deep  black  loam  of  the  river  bottoms,  which  stretches 
east  and  west  across  the  state  and  includes  over  60  per  cent, 
of  negroes  in  its  population.  This  is  succeeded  by  the  low, 
coastal  timber  belt,  marked  by  a  decline  in  the  quality  of  the 
soil  and  the  proportion  of  negro  inhabitants.22 

In  the  dead  level  of  extensive  plains  even  slight  elevations  Value  of 
are  seized  upon  for  special  uses,  or  acquire  peculiar  signifi-  slight  ele- 
cance.  The  Kurgans  or  burial  mounds  of  the  prehistoric 
inhabitants  of  Russia,  often  twenty  to  fifty  feet  high,  serve 
to-day  as  watch-towers  for  herdsmen  tending  their  flocks.23 
Similarly  the  Bou-bous,  inhabiting  the  flat  grasslands  of  the 
French  Congo  between  the  Shari  and  Ubangui  Rivers,  use 
the  low  knolls  dotted  over  their  country,  probably  old  ant- 
hills, as  lookout  points  against  raiders.24  The  sand  hills  and 
ridges  which  border  the  southern  edges  of  the  North  German 
lowland  form  districts  sharply  contrasted  to  the  swampy, 
wooded  depressions  of  the  old  deserted  river  valleys  just  to 
the  north.  Early  occupied  by  a  German  stock,  they  furnished 
the  first  German  colonists  to  displace  the  primitive  Slav 


482 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 


population  surviving  in  those  unattractive,  inaccessible 
regions,  as  seen  in  the  Spreewald  near  Kottbus  to-day. 
Plains  and  The  boundless  horizon  which  is  unfavorable  to  a  nascent 
political  people  endows  them  in  their  belated  maturity  with  the  power 
expansion.  o£  mastering  large  areas.  Political  expansion  is  the  domi- 
nant characteristic  of  the  peoples  of  the  plains.  Hax- 
thausen  observed  that  handicapped  and  retarded  Russia 
commands  every  geographic  condition  and  national  trait 
necessary  for  virile  and  expansive  political  power.2'  Mus- 
covite expansion  eastward  across  the  lowlands  of  Europe 
and  Asia  is  paralleled  by  the  rapid  spread  of  American 
settlement  and  dominion  across  the  plains  and  prairies  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley,  and  Hungarian  domination  of  the  wide 
Danubian  levels  from  the  foot-hills  of  the  Austrian  Alps  to 
the  far  Carpathian  watershed.  It  was  the  closely  linked 
lowlands  of  the  Seine  and  Loire  which  formed  the  core  of 
political  expansion  and  centralization  in  France.  Nearly  the 
whole  northern  lowland  of  Germany  has  been  gradually  ab- 
sorbed by  the  kingdom  of  Prussia,  which  now  comprises  in 
its  territory  almost  two-thirds  of  the  total  area  of  the  Em- 
pire. Prussian  statesmen  formulated  the  policy  of  German 
unification  and  colonial  expansion,  and  to  Prussia  fell  the 
hereditary  headship  of  the  Empire. 

Lowland  states  tend  to  stretch  out  and  out  to  boundaries 
which  depend  more  upon  the  reach  of  the  central  authority 
than  upon  physical  features.  We  have  seen  American  settle- 
ment and  dominion  overleap  one  natural  boundary  after  an- 
other between  the  Mississippi  River  and  the  Pacific,  from  1804 
to  1848.  Russia  in  an  equally  short  period  has  pushed  forward 
its  Asiatic  frontier  at  a  dozen  points,  despite  all  barriers  of 
desert  and  mountain.  Argentina,  blessed  with  extensive  plains, 
fertile  soil  and  temperate  climate,  which  have  served  to  aug- 
ment its  population  both  by  natural  increase  and  steady  immi- 
gration (one-fourth  of  its  population  is  foreign),  has  expanded 
across  the  Rio  Negro  over  the  grasslands  of  the  Patagonian 
plain,  and  thereby  enlarged  its  area  by  259,620  square  miles 
since  1881.  The  statesman  of  the  plains  is  a  nature-made  im- 
perialist ;  he  nurses  wide  territorial  policies  and  draws  his 
frontiers  for  the  future.  To  him  a  "far-flung  battle  line"  is 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  483 

significant  only  as  a  means  to  secure  a  far-flung  boundary  line. 

From  these  low,  accessible  plains  of  adequate  rainfall, 
which  at  first  encourage  primitive  nomadism  but  finally  make  P  ams* 
it  yield  to  sedentary  life  and  to  dense  populations  spreading 
their  farms  and  cities  farther  and  farther  over  the  unresisting 
surface  of  the  land,  we  turn  to  those  boundless  arid  steppes 
and  deserts  which  Nature  has  made  forever  the  homes  of 
restless,  rootless  peoples.  Here  quiescence  is  impossible,  the 
Volkerwanderung  is  habitual,  migration  is  permanent.  The 
only  change  is  this  eternal  restlessness.  While  the  people 
jnove,  progress  stands  still.  Everywhere  the~sunrscorcKed 
grasslands  and  waterless  waste  have  drawn  the  dead-line 
to  the  advance  of  indigenous  civilization.  They  permit  no 
accumulation  of  productive  wealth  beyond  increasing  flocks 
and  herds,  and  limit  even  their  growth  by  the  food  supply 
of  scanty,  scattered  pasturage.  The  meager  rainfall  elimi- 
nates forests  and  therewith  a  barrier  to  migrations ;  it  also 
restricts  vegetation  to  grasses,  sedges  and  those  forms  which 
can  survive  a  prolonged  summer  drought  and  require  a 
short  period  of  growth. 

The  union  of  arid  plains  and  steppe  vegetation  is  based  Distribution 
upon  climate,  and  is  therefore  a  widely  distributed  phenom-  a° 
enon.  These  plains,  whether  high  or  low,  are  found  in  their 
greatest  extent  in  the  dry  trade-wind  belts,  as  in  the  deserts 
and  steppes  of  Arabia,  Persia,  Sudan,  the  Sahara,  South 
Africa  and  Central  Australia;  and  in  vast  continental  in- 
teriors, where  the  winds  arrive  robbed  of  their  moisture  in 
passing  intervening  highlands,  as  in  the  grasslands  of  our 
western  plains,  the  llanos  and  pampas  of  South  America, 
and  the  steppes  of  Central  Asia.  But  wherever  they  occur, 
whether  in  Argentina  or  Russian  Turkestan  or  the  higher 
plains  of  Mongolia  and  Tibet,  they  present  the  same  general 
characteristics  of  land  surface,  climate,  flora  and  fauna, 
and  the  same  nomadic  populations  of  pastoral  or  hunting 
tribes.  In  them  the  movement  of  peoples  reaches  its  culminat- 
ing point,  permanent  settlement  its  nil  point.  Here  the 
hunting  savage  makes  the  widest  sweep  in  pursuit  of  buffalo 
or  antelope,  and  pauses  least  to  till  a  field ;  here  the  pastoral 
nomad  follows  his  systematic  wandering  in  search  of  pas- 


484, 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  485 

turage  and  his  hardly  less  systematic  campaigns  of  conquest. 
It  is  the  vq,st  area  and  wide  distribution  of  these  arid  plains, 
combined  with  the  mobility  which  they  impose  on  native 
human  life,  that  has  lent  them  historical  importance,  and 
reproduced  in  all  sections  of  the  world  that  significant  homol- 
ogous relation  of  arid  and  well-watered  districts. 

The  grasslands  of  the  old  world  developed  historical  Pastoral 
importance  only  after  the  domestication  of  cattle,  sheep,  - 
goats,  asses,  horses,  camels  and  yaks.  This  step  in 
progress  resulted  in  the  evolution  of  peoples  who  renounced 
the  precarious  subsistence  of  the  chase  and  escaped  the 
drudgery  of  agriculture,  to  devote  themselves  to  pastoral 
life.  It  was  possible  only  where  domesticable  animals  were 
present,  and  where  the  intelligence  of  the  native  or  the 
peculiar  pressure  exerted  by  environment  suggested  the 
change  from  a  natural  to  an  artificial  basis  of  subsistence. 
Australia  lacked  the  type  of  animal.  Though  North 
America  had  the  reindeer  and  buffalo,  and  South  America 
the  guanaco,  llama  and  alpaca,  only  the  last  two  were  domes- 
ticated in  the  Andean  highlands;  but  as  these  were  restricted 
to  altitudes  from  10,000  to  14,000  feet,  where  pasturage 
was  limited,  stock  raising  in  primitive  South  America  was 
merely  an  adjunct  to  the  sedentary  agriculture  of  the  high 
intermontane  valleys,  and  never  became  the  basis  for  pastoral 
nomadism  on  the  grassy  plains.  However,  when  the  Span- 
iards introduced  horses  and  cattle  into  South  America,  the 
Indians  and  half-breeds  of  the  llanos  and  pampas  became 
regular  pastoral  nomads,  known  as  llaneros  and  gauchos. 
They  are  a  race  of  horsemen,  wielding  javelin  and  lasso  and 
bola,  living  on  meat,  often  on  horse-flesh  like  the  ancient 
Huns,  dwelling  in  leather  tents  made  on  a  cane  framework, 
like  those  of  the  modern  Kirghis  and  medieval  Tartars, 
dressed  in  cloaks  of  horsehide  sewn  together,  and  raiding 
the  Argentinian  frontier  of  white  settlement  for  horses,  sheep 
and  cattle,  with  the  true  marauding  instinct  of  all  nomads.26 

Aridity  is  not  the  only  climatic  condition  condemning  a  Pastoral 
people  to  nomadic  life.    Excessive  cold,  producing  the  tundra  nomads  of 
wastes  of  the   far  north,  has   the  same  effect.      Therefore,      ^ 
throughout  Arctic  Eurasia,  from  the  Lapp  district  of  Nor- 


486          PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

way  to  the  inland  Chukchcs  of  eastern  Siberia,  we  have  a 
succession  of  Hyperborean  peoples  pasturing  their  herds  of 
reindeer  over  the  moss  and  lichen  tundra,  and  supplementing 
their  food  supply  with  hunting  and  fishing.  The  reindeer 
Chukches  once  confined  themselves  to  their  peninsula,  so  long 
as  the  grazing  grounds  were  unexhausted;  but  they  now 
range  as  far  west  as  Yakutsk  on  the  Lena  River.  The 
Orochones  of  the  Kolima  River  district  in  eastern  Siberia, 
who  live  chiefly  by  their  reindeer,  have  small  herds.  A  well- 
to-do  person  will  have  40  to  100  animals,  and  the  wealthiest 
only  700,  while  the  Chukches  with  herds  of  10,000  often 
seek  the  pasture  of  the  Kolima  tundra.27  Farther  west,  the 
Samoyedes  of  northern  Siberia  and  Russia  and  the  Zirians 
of  the  Petchora  River  range  with  their  large  herds  north- 
ward to  the  Yalmal  Peninsula  and  Vaygats  Isle  in  summer, 
and  southward  in  winter.  [See  map  pages  103,  225.]  Here 
a  herd  of  fifty  head,  which  just  suffices  for  the  support  of  one 
family  of  four  souls,  requires  10  square  versts,  or  4.44  square 
miles  of  tundra  pasturage. ~s  Hence  population  must  forever 
remain  too  sparse  ever  to  attain  historical  significance.  [See 
map  page  8.]  The  Russian  Lapps,  too,  lead  a  semi-nomadic 
life.  Each  group  has  a  particular  summer  and  winter  settle- 
ment. The  winter  village  is  located  usually  inland  in  the  Kola 
Peninsula,  where  the  forests  lend  shelter  to  the  herds,  and  the 
summer  one  near  the  tundra  of  the  coast,  where  fishing  is  ac- 
cessible. In  winter,  like  the  nomads  of  the  deserts,  they  add  to 
their  slender  income  by  the  transport  of  goods  by  their  reindeer 
and  by  service  at  the  post  stations.29 

Historical  These  nomads  of  the  frozen  north,  scattered  sparsely  over 

importance  the  remote  periphery  of  the  habitable  world,  have  lacked 
*  the  historical  importance  which  in  all  times  has  attached 
to  the  steppe  nomads,  owing  to  their  central  location.  The 
broad  belt  of  deserts  and  grasslands  which  crosses  the  old 
world  diagonally  between  10°  and  60°  North  Latitude  from 
the  Atlantic  in  Africa  to  the  Pacific  in  Asia,  either  borders 
or  encompasses  the  old  domains  of  culture  found  in  river 
oases,  alluvial  lowlands  or  coastal  plains  of  the  Torrid  and 
Temperate  Zones.  The  restless,  mobile,  unbound  shepherds 
of  the  arid  lands  have  never  long  been  contained  by  the 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 


487 


country  which  bred  them.  They  have  constantly  encroached 
upon  the  territory  of  their  better  placed  neighbors,  invading, 
conquering,  appropriating  their  fields  and  cities,  disturbing 
but  at  the  same  time  acquiring  their  culture,  lording  it  over 
the  passive  agriculturists,  and  at  the  same  time  putting  iron 
into  their  weaker  blood.  It  is  the  geographical  contact  be- 
tween arid  steppes  and  moist  river  valley,  between  land  of 
poverty  and  land  of  plenty,  that  has  made  the  history  of  the 
two  inseparable.30 


of  pastoral 


Every  aspect  of  human  life  in  the  steppes  bears  the  stamp  nomada. 


CULTURAL  EEGIONS  OP  AFRICA  AND  ARABIA. 


1.  Agricultural  tribes.  2.  Combined  agricultural  and  grazing. 
3.  Agricultural  tribes  under  dominion  of  pastoral  nomads.  4.  De- 
serts. 5.  Oases,  combining  tillage  and  grazing.  6.  Hunting  tribes. 


488  PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

of  mobility.  The  nomad  tolerates  no  clog  upon  his  move- 
ments. His  dwelling  is  the  tent  of  skin  or  felt  as  among 
Kalmucks  and  Kirghis,  or  the  tent  wagon  of  the  modern 
Boer81  and  the  ancient  Scythian  as  described  by  Herodotus.32 
"This  device  has  been  contrived  by  them  as  the  country  is  fit 
for  it,"  he  says, — level,  grassy,  treeless.  The  temporary 
settlement  of  shepherd  tribes  is  the  group  of  tents,  or  the 
ancient  carrago  camp  of  the  nomadic  Visigoths,33  or  the 
laager  of  the  pastoral  Boers,  both  a  circular  barricade  or 
corral  of  wagons. 

Tendency  Constant  movement  reduces  the  impedimenta  to  a  minimum. 

to  trek.  The  Qrochones,  a  Tunguse  nomadic  tribe  of  eastern  Siberia, 
have  no  furniture  in  their  tents,  and  keep  their  meager  supply 
of  clothing  and  utensils  neatly  packed  on  sledges,  as  if  to 
start  at  a  moment's  notice.34  The  only  desirable  form  of 
capital  is  that  which  transports  itself,  namely,  flocks  and 
herds.  Beyond  that,  wealth  is  limited  to  strictly  portable 
forms,  preferably  silver,  gold  and  jewels.  It  was  in  terms  of 
these,  besides  their  herds,  that  the  riches  of  Abraham  and 
Lot  were  rated  in  the  Bible.  That  the  Israelites  when  travel- 
ing through  the  wilderness  should  have  had  the  gold  to  make 
the  golden  calf  accords  strictly  with  the  verisimilitude  of 
pastoral  life.35  Moreover,  that  these  enslaved  descendants  of 
the  Sheik  Abraham,  with  their  traditions  of  pastoral  life, 
should  have  simply  trekked — ruptured  the  frail  ties  of  re- 
cently acquired  habit  which  bound  them  to  the  Nile  soil,  is 
also  in  keeping  with  their  inborn  nomadic  spirit.  Similar 
instances  occur  among  modern  peoples.  The  Great  Trek 
of  the  South  African  Boers  in  1836,  by  which  they  renounced 
not  only  their  unwelcome  allegiance  to  England,  but  also 
their  land,36  was  another  exodus  in  accordance  with  the  in- 
stinct of  a  pastoral  people.  They  adopted  no  strange  or 
difficult  course,  but  traveled  with  their  families  as  they  were 
wont  in  their  every  day  life  of  cattle-tenders,  took  all  their 
chattels  with  them,  and  headed  for  the  thin  pastures  of  the 
far-reaching  veldt.  The  Russian  government  has  had  to 
contend  with  a  like  fluidity  in  her  Cossack  tribes  of  the 
steppes,  who  have  been  up  and  off  when  imperial  authority 
became  oppressive.  In  the  summer  of  1878  West  Siberia 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  489 

lost  about  9000  Kirghis,  who  left  the  province  Semipalatinsk 
to  seek  Mongolia. 

Environment  determines  the  nomadic  habits  of  the  dweller  Seasonal 
of  desert  and  steppe.  The  distribution  of  pasture  and 
water  fixes  the  scope  and  the  rate  of  his  wandering;  these 
in  turn  depend  upon  geographic  conditions  and  vary  with 
the  season.  The  Papago  Indians  of  southern  Arizona  range 
with  their  cattle  over  a  territory  100  by  150  miles  in  extent, 
and  wander  across  the  border  into  Mexico.  When  their  main 
water  supply,  derived  from  wells  or  artificial  reservoirs 
near  their  summer  villages,  is  exhausted,  they  migrate 
to  the  water-holes,  springs  or  streams  in  the  canons. 
There  the  cattle  graze  out  on  the  plains  and  return  to  the 
canons  to  drink.37  Every  Mongol  tribe  and  clan  has  its 
seasonal  migration.  In  winter  the  heavier  precipitation  and 
fuller  streams  enable  them  to  collect  in  considerable  groups 
in  protected  valleys ;  but  the  dry  summer  disperses  them  over 
the  widest  area  possible,  in  order  to  utilize  every  water-hole 
and  grass  spot.  The  hotter  regions  of  the  plains  are  aban- 
doned in  summer  for  highlands,  where  the  short  period  of 
warmth  yields  temporary  pastures  and  where  alone  water 
can  be  found.  The  Kirghis  of  Russian  Turkestan  resort  in 
summer  to  the  slopes  and  high  valleys  of  the  Altai  Mountains, 
where  their  auls  or  tent  villages  may  be  seen  surrounded  by 
big  flocks  of  sheep,  goats,  camels,  horses  and  cattle.38  The 
Pamir  in  the  warm  months  is  the  gathering  place  for  the 
nomads  of  Central  Asia.  The  naked  desert  of  Arabia  yields 
a  rare  herbage  during  the  rainy  season,  when  the  Bedouin 
tribes  resort  to  it  for  pasturage  ;39  but  during  the  succeeding 
drought  they  scatter  to  the  hills  of  Yemen,  Syria  and  Pales- 
tine,40 or  migrate  to  the  valley  of  the  Nile  and  Euphrates.41 
The  Arabs  of  the  northern  Sahara,  followed  by  small  flocks 
of  sheep  and  goats,  vibrate  between  the  summer  pastures  on 
the  slopes  of  the  Atlas  Mountains  and  the  scant,  wiry  grass 
tufts  found  in  winter  on  the  borders  of  the  desert.42  When 
the  equatorial  rains  begin  in  June,  the  Arabs  of  the  Atbara 
River  follow  them  north-westward  into  the  Nubian  desert,  and 
let  their  camel  herds  graze  on  the  delicate  grass  which  the 
moisture  has  conjured  up  from  the  sandy  soil.  The 


490  PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

country  about  Cassala,  which  is  flooded  during  the  monsoon 
rains  by  the  rivers  from  the  Abyssinian  Mountains,  is  re- 
served for  the  dry  season.43  In  the  same  way  the  Tartar 
tribes  of  the  Dnieper,  Don,  Volga  and  Ural  Rivers  in  the 
thirteenth  century  moved  down  these  rivers  in  winter  to  the  sea 
coast,  and  in  summer  up-stream  to  the  hills  and  mountains.44 
So  for  the  past  hundred  years  the  Boers  of  the  South  African 
grasslands  have  migrated  in  their  tent  wagons  from  the 
higher  to  the  lower  pastures,  according  to  the  season  of  the 
year,  invading  even  the  Karroo  Desert  after  the  short  summer 
rains.45 

Marauding  This  systematic  movement  of  nomads  within  their  accepted 
expeditions,  boundaries  leads,  on  slight  provocation,  to  excursions  be- 
yond their  own  frontiers  into  neighboring  territories.  The 
growing  herd  alone  necessitates  the  absorption  of  more  land, 
more  water-holes,  because  the  grazed  pastures  renew  their 
grass  slowly  under  the  prevailing  conditions  of  drought. 
An  area  sufficient  for  the  support  of  the  tribe  is  inadequate 
for  the  sustenance  of  the  herd,  whose  increase  is  a  perennial 
expansive  force.  Soon  the  pastures  become  filled  with  the 
feeding  flocks,  and  then  herdsmen  and  herds  spill  over  into 
other  fields.  Often  a  season  of  unusual  drought,  reducing 
the  existing  herbage  which  is  scarcely  adequate  at  best,  gives 
rise  to  those  irregular,  temporary  expansions  which  enlarge 
the  geographical  horizon  of  the  horde,  and  eventuate  in 
widespread  conquest.  Such  incursions,  like  the  seasonal 
movements  of  nomads,  result  from  the  helpless  dependence  of 
shepherd  tribes  upon  variations  of  rainfall. 

The  nomad's  basis  of  life  is  at  best  precarious.  He  and 
want  are  familiar  friends.  A  pest  among  his  herds,  dimin- 
ished pasturage,  failing  wells,  all  bring  him  face  to  face  with 
famine,  and  drive  him  to  robbery  and  pillage.40  Marauding 
tendencies  are  ingrained  in  all  dwellers  of  the  deserts  and 
steppes.47  Since  the  days  of  Job,  the  Bedouins  of  Arabia 
have  been  a  race  of  marauders ;  they  have  reduced  robbery 
to  a  system.  Predatory  excursions  figure  conspicuously  in 
the  history  of  all  the  tribes.  Robber  is  a  title  of  honor.43 
Pliny  said  that  the  Arabs  were  equally  addicted  to  theft  and 
trade.  They  pillaged  caravans  and  held  them  for  ransom, 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  491 

or  gave  them  safe  conduct  across  the  desert  for  a  price. 
Formerly  the  Turkoman  tribes  of  the  Trans-Caspian  steppes 
levied  on  the  bordering  districts,  notably  the  northern  part 
of  Khorasan,  which  belonged  more  to  the  Turkomans,  Yomut 
and  Goklan  tribes  of  the  adjoining  steppe  than  to  the  resident 
Persians.  The  border  districts  of  Herat,  Khiva,  Merv  and 
Bukhara  used  to  suffer  in  the  same  way  from  the  raids  of  the 
Tekkes,  till  the  Russians  checked  the  evil.49  The  Tekkes  had 
depopulated  whole  districts,  invaded  Persian  towns  of  con- 
siderable size,  and  carried  off  countless  families  into  slavery. 
Both  Turkomans  and  Kirghis  tribes  prior  to  1873  raided 
caravans  and  carried  off  the  travelers  to  the  slave  markets 
of  Bukhara  and  Samarkand.50  [See  map  page  103.] 

Among  these  tribes  no  young  man  commanded  respect  in 
his  community  till  he  had  participated  in  a  baranta  or  cattle- 
raising.51  For  centuries  the  nomadic  hordes  of  the  Russian 
steppes  systematically  pillaged  the  peaceful  agricultural 
Slavs,  who  were  threatening  to  encroach  upon  their  pasture 
lands.  The  sudden,  swift  descent  and  swift  retreat  of  the 
mounted  marauders  with  the  booty  into  the  pathless  grass- 
lands, whither  pursuit  was  dangerous,  their  tendency  to  rob 
and  conquer  but  never  to  colonize,  involved  Russia  in  a  long 
struggle,  which  ceased  only  with  the  extension  of  Muscovite 
dominion  over  the  steppes.52 

All   the  Saharan   tribes   are  marauders,  whether  Arabs,  Depreda- 
Berber  Tuaregs,  or  Negroid  Tibbus.     The  desert  has  made  tion  and 
them  so.     The  Tuaregs  are  chronic  freebooters;  they  keep    ?n?^ 
the  Sahara  and  especially  the  caravan  routes  in  constant  in-  noma(j8t 
security.     They  stretch  a  cordon  across  these  routes  from 
Ghadames  and  Ghat  in  the  east  to  the  great  oases  of  Insalah 
and  Twat  in  the  west;  and  from  the  oases  and  hills  forming 
their  headquarters  they  spread  for  pasturage  and  blackmail 
over  the  desert.53    They  exact  toll  over  and  over  again  from 
a  caravan,  provide  it  with  a  military  escort  of  their  own 
tribesmen,  and  then  pillage  it  on  the  way.5*     This  has  been 
the  experience  of  Barth55  and  other  explorers.     Caravans 
have  not  been  their  only  prey.     The  agricultural  peoples  in 
the  Niger  flood-plain,  the  commerce  on  the  river,   and  the 
markets  of  Timbuctoo  long  suffered  from  the  raids  of  the 


492 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 


Forms  of 
defense 
against  no- 
mad de- 
predations. 


Tuaregs  of  the  Sahara.  They  collected  tribute  in  the  form 
of  grain,  salt,  garments,  horses  and  gold,  typical  needs  of  a 
desert  people,  imposed  tolls  on  caravans  and  on  merchant 
fleets  passing  down  the  Niger  to  Timbuctoo.  In  1770  they 
began  to  move  from  the  desert  and  appropriate  the  fertile 
plains  in  the  northern  part  of  the  Niger  Valley,  and  in  1800 
they  conquered  Timbuctoo;  but  soon  they  had  to  yield  to 
another  tribe  of  pastoral  nomads,  the  Fulbes  from  the  Sene- 
gal, who  in  1813  established  a  short-lived  but  well  organized 
empire  on  the  ruins  of  the  Tuareg  dominion.56  [See  map  page 
105.]  The  other  agricultural  states  of  the  Sudan  have  had  the 
same  experience.  The  Tibbus,  predatory  nomads  of  the  French 
Sahara  just  north  of  Lake  Chad  and  the  River  Yo,  mounted  on 
camels  and  ponies,  cross  the  shrunken  river  in  the  dry  season 
and  raid  Bornu  for  cattle,  carry  off  women  and  children  to  sell 
as  slaves,  pillage  the  weekly  markets  on  the  Yo,  and  plunder 
caravans  of  pilgrims  moving  eastward  to  Mecca.57  Nowhere 
can  desert  nomads  and  the  civilized  peoples  of  agricultural 
plains  dwell  side  by  side  in  peace.  Raids,  encroachments, 
reprisals,  finally  conquest  from  one  side  or  the  other  is  the 
formula  for  their  history.  [See  map  page  487.] 

The  raided  territory,  if  a  modern  civilized  state,  organ- 
izes its  border  communities  into  a  native  mounted  police,  as 
the  English  have  done  in  Bornu,  Sokoto  and  the  Egyptian 
Sudan,  and  as  the  Russians  did  with  their  Cossack  riders 
along  the  successive  frontiers  of  Muscovite  advance  into  the 
steppes ;  or  it  takes  into  its  employ,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
nearest  nomad  tribes  to  repress  or  punish  every  hostile  move- 
ment beyond.  Among  the  ancient  states  the  method  was 
generally  different.  Since  the  nomad  invaders  came  with 
their  flocks  and  herds,  a  barrier  often  sufficed  to  block  their 
progress.  For  this  purpose  Sesostris  built  the  long  wall  of 
1500  stadia  from  Pelusium  to  Heliopolis  as  a  barricade 
against  the  Arabians.8"  Ancient  Carthage  constructed  a 
ditch  to  check  the  depredations  of  the  nomads  of  Numidia.69 
The  early  kings  of  Assyria  built  a  barrier  across  the  plains 
of  the  Euphrates  above  Babylon  to  secure  their  dominion 
from  the  incursions  of  the  desert  Medes.60  In  the  fifth  cen- 
tury of  our  era,  the  "Red  Wall"  was  constructed  near  the 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

northern  frontier  of  Persia  as  a  bulwark  against  the  Huns. 
It  stretched  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  from  the  Caspian 
Sea  at  the  ancient  port  of  Aboskun  eastward  to  the  moun- 
tains, and  thus  enclosed  the  populous  valley  of  the  Gurgen 
River.61  In  remote  ages  the  neck  of  the  Crimean  Peninsula 
was  fortified  by  &  wall  against  the  irruptions  of  the  Tauro- 
Scythians.62  The  Russians  early  in  their  national  history 
used  the  same  means  of  defense  against  Tartar  incursions. 
One  wall  was  built  from  Pensa  on  the  Sura  River  to  Simbirsk 
on  the  Volga,  just  south  of  Kazan;  another,  further 
strengthened  by  a  foss  and  palisades,  extended  from  the 
fortress  of  Tsaritzin  at  the  southern  elbow  of  the  Volga 
across  the  fifty-mile  interval  to  the  Don,  and  was  still  defended 
in  1794  by  the  Cossacks  of  the  Don  against  the  neighboring 
Kirghis  hordes.63  The  classic  example  of  such  fortifications 
against  pastoral  nomads,  however,  is  the  Great  Wall  of 
China. 

The  nomad  is  economically  a  herdsman,  politically  a  con-  Pastoral 

queror,   and   chronically   a   fighter.      Strife   over  pasturage  ^e  aa  a, 

,        n  .      f,  .     ,  ,.  ,  ,    .,  T&,  training  for 

and  wells  meets  us  in  the  typical  history  of  Abraham,  JLot 

and  Isaac  ;64  it  exists  within  and  without  the  clan.  The  neces- 
sity of  guarding  the  pastures,  which  are  only  intermittently 
occupied,  involves  a  persistent  military  organization.  The 
nation  is  a  quiescent  army,  the  army  a  mobilized  nation.65 
It  carries  with  it  a  self-transporting  commissariat  in  its 
flocks  and  herds.  Constant  practice  in  riding,  scouting  and 
the  use  of  arms,  physical  endurance  tested  by  centuries  of 
exertion  and  hardship,  make  every  nomad  a  soldier.  Cavalry 
and  camel  corps  add  to  the  swiftness  and  vigor  of  their  on- 
slaught, make  their  military  strategy  that  of  sudden  attack 
and  swifter  retreat,  to  be  met  only  by  wariness  and  extreme 
mobility.  The  ancient  Scythians  of  the  lower  Danubian 
steppes  were  all  horse  archers,  like  the  Parthians.  "If 
the  Scythians  were  united,  there  is  no  nation  which  could 
compare  with  them  or  would  be  capable  of  resisting  them ; 
I  do  not  say  in  Europe,  but  even  in  Asia,"  said  Thucydides.68 
In  this  opinion  Herodotus  concurred.67  The  nomad's  whole 
existence  breeds  courage.  The  independent,  hazardous  life 
of  the  desert  makes  the  Arab  the  bravest  of  mankind,  but 


494 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 


Military 
organiza- 
tion of 
nomads. 


Capacity 
for  conquest 
and  political 

consolida- 
tion. 


the  settled,  agricultural  Arab  of  Egypt  and  Mohammedan 
Spain  lost  most  of  his  fighting  qualities.88 

The  daily  life  of  a  nomad  horde  is  a  training  school  for 
military  organization.  In  the  evening  the  flocks  and  herds 
are  distributed  with  system  around  the  camp  to  prevent  con- 
fusion. The  difficult  art  of  a  well  ordered  march,  of  making 
and  breaking  camp,  and  of  foraging  is  practiced  almost 
daily  in  their  constant  migrations.69  The  usual  order  of  the 
Bedouin  march  could  scarcely  be  surpassed  by  an  army. 
In  advance  of  the  caravan  moves  a  body  of  armed  horsemen, 
five  or  seven  kilometers  ahead ;  then  follows  the  main  body  of 
the  tribesmen  mounted  on  horses  and  camels,  then  the  female 
camels,  and  after  these  the  beasts  of  burden  with  the  women 
and  children.  The  encampment  of  tents  with  the  places  for 
men,  arms  and  herds  is  also  carefully  regulated.  More  than 
this,  the  horde  is  organized  into  companies  with  their  superior 
and  subordinate  leaders.70  John  de  Carpini  describes  Genghis 
Khan's  military  organization  of  his  vast  Tartar  horde  by 
tens,  hundreds  and  thousands,  his  absolute  dominion  over 
his  conquered  subjects,  and  prompt  absorption  of  them  into 
his  fighting  force,  by  the  compulsory  enlistment  of  soldiers 
out  of  every  freshly  subjugated  nation.71  In  the  same  way 
the  Hebrew  tribes,  when  preparing  for  the  conquest  of 
Canaan,  adopted  from  the  desert  Midianites  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  horde  into  tens,  hundreds  and  thousands  under 
judges,  who  were  also  military  leaders  in  time  of  war. 

Thus  certain  geographic  conditions  produce  directly  the 
habitual  and  systematic  migration  of  the  nomads,  and 
through  this  indirectly  that  military  and  political  organiza- 
tion which  has  given  the  shepherd  races  of  the  earth  their 
great  historical  mission  of  political  consolidation.  Agricul- 
ture, though  underlying  all  permanent  advance  in  civilization, 
is  handicapped  by  the  lack  of  courage,  mobility,  enterprise 
and  large  political  outlook  characterizing  early  tillers  of  the 
soil.  All  these  qualities  the  nomad  possesses.  Hence  the 
union  of  these  two  elements,  imperious  pastor  superimposed 
upon  peaceful  tiller,  has  made  the  only  stable  governments 
among  savage  and  semi-civilized  races.72  The  politically 
invertebrate  peoples  of  dark  Africa  have  secured  the  back- 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  495 

bone  to  erect  states  only  from  nomad  conquerors.  The  his- 
tory of  the  Sudan  cannot  be  understood  apart  from  a 
knowledge  of  the  Sahara  and  its  peoples.  All  the  Sudanese 
states  were  formed  by  invaders  from  the  northern  desert, 
Hamitic  or  Semitic.  [See  map  page  487.]  The  Galla  or 
Wahuma  herdsmen  of  East  Africa  founded  and  maintained  the 
relatively  stable  states  of  Uganda,  Kittara,  Karague,  and 
Uzinza  in  the  equatorial  district ;  the  conquerors  remained 
herders  while  they  lorded  it  over  the  agricultural  aborigines.73 
In  prehistoric  times  when  the  various  peoples  of  the  Aryan  lin- 
guistic family  were  spreading  over  Europe  and  southern  Asia, 
the  superiority  of  the  shepherd  races  must  have  been  especially 
marked,  because  in  that  era  only  the  unobstructed  surface 
of  the  steppes  permitted  the  concentration  of  men  on  a  vast 
scale  for  migration  and  conquest.  Everywhere  else  regions 
of  broken  relief  and  dense  forests  harbored  small,  isolated 
peoples,  to  whom  both  the  idea  and  the  technique  of  com- 
bined movement  were  foreign. 

The  rapidity  and  wide  scope  of  such  conquests  is  explained  Scope  of 
largely  by  the  fact  that  nomads  try  to  displace  only  the  nomad 
ruling  classes  in  the  subjugated  territory,  leaving  the  mass  c< 
of  the  population  practically  undisturbed.  Thus  they  spread 
themselves  thin  over  a  wide  area.  How  lasting  are  the  re- 
sults of  such  conquests  depends  upon  the  degree  of  social 
evolution  attained  by  the  herdsmen.  Genghis  Khan  and 
Tamerlane,  after  the  manner  of  overlords,  organized  their 
conquered  nations,  but  left  them  under  the  control  of  local 
princes,74  while  their  tribute  gatherers  annually  swept  the 
country  like  typical  nomad  marauders.  The  Turks  are  still 
only  encamped  in  Europe.  They  too  make  taxation  despolia- 
tion. And  though  their  dominion  has  produced  no  assimila- 
tion between  victor  and  vanquished,  it  has  given  political 
consolidation  to  a  large  area  occupied  by  varied  peoples. 
The  Hyksos  conquest  of  Egypt  found  the  Nile  Valley  divided 
into  several  petty  principalities  under  a  nominal  king.  The 
nomad  conquerors  possessed  political  capacity  and  gave  to 
Egypt  a  strong,  centralized  government,  which  laid  the 
basis  for  the  power  and  glory  of  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty. 
The  Tartars  in  1279  A.  D.  and  the  Manchus  in  1664  con- 


496 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 


Centraliza- 
tion versus 
decentral- 
ization in 

nomadism. 


quered  China,  extended  its  boundaries,  governed  the  country 
as  a  ruling  class,  and  left  the  established  order  of  things 
undisturbed.  The  Saracen  conquest  of  North  Africa  and 
Spain  showed  for  a  time  organization  and  a  permanence  due 
to  the  advanced  cultural  status  of  the  sedentary  Arabs  drawn 
into  the  movement  by  religious  enthusiasm.  The  environment 
of  Spain  tended  to  conserve  the  knowledge  of  agriculture, 
industry,  architecture,  and  science  which  they  brought  in 
and  which  might  have  cemented  Spaniard  and  Moor,  had  it 
not  been  for  the  intense  religious  antagonism  existing  between 
the  two  races. 

The  history  of  nomad  conquerors  shows  that  they  become 
weakened  by  the  enervating  climate  and  the  effeminating 
luxury  of  the  moist  and  fertile  lowlands.  They  lose  even- 
tually their  warlike  spirit,  like  the  Fellatah  or  Fulbe  founders 
of  the  Sudanese  states,75  and  are  either  displaced  from  their 
insecure  thrones  by  other  conquerors  sprung  from  the  same 
nomad-breeding  steppe,  as  the  Aryan  princes  of  India  by  the 
Mongol  Emperor,  and  the  Saracen  invaders  of  Mesopotamia 
by  the  victorious  Turkomans ;  or  they  are  expelled  in  time  by 
their  conquered  subjects,  as  the  Tartars  were  from  Russia, 
the  Moors  from  Spain,  and  the  Turks  from  the  Danube 
Valley. 

Nomad  hordes  unite  for  concerted  action  to  resist  en- 
croachment upon  their  pastures,  or  for  marauding  expedi- 
tions, or  for  widespread  conquest;  but  such  unions  are  from 
their  nature  temporary,  though  a  career  of  conquest  may  be 
sustained  for  decades.  The  geographically  determined  mo- 
bility which  facilitates  such  concentration  favors  also  dis- 
persal, decentralization.  This  is  the  paradox  In  nomadism. 
Geographic  conditions  in  arid  lands  necessitate  sparse  dis- 
tribution of  population  and  of  herds.  Pastoral  life  requires 
large  spaces  and  small  social  groups.  When  Abraham  and 
Lot  went  to  Canaan  from  Egypt,  "the  land  was  not  able  to 
bear  them  that  they  might  dwell  together,  for  their  substance 
was  great."  Strife  for  the  pasturage  ensued  between  their 
respective  herdsmen,  so  the  two  sheiks  separated,  Lot  taking 
the  plains  of  Jordan  and  Abraham  the  hill  pastures  of  He- 
bron. Jacob  and  Esau  separated  for  the  same  reason.  The 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  497 

ancampment  of  the  Kirghis  shepherds  rarely  averages  over 
five  or  six  tents,  except  on  the  best  grazing  grounds  at  the 
best  season  of  the  year.  The  flow  of  spring,  well  or  stream 
also  helps  to  regulate  their  size.  The  groups  of  Mongol 
yurts  or  felt  tents  along  the  piedmont  margin  of  the  Gobi 
vary  from  four  tents  to  a  large  encampment,  according  to 
water  and  grass.76  Prevalsky  mentions  a  population  of  70 
families  or  300  souls  in  the  Lob  Nor  district  distributed  in 
11  villages,  or  less  than  28  in  each  group.77  Barth  noticed 
the  smallness  of  all  the  oasis  towns  of  the  Sahara,  even  those 
occupying  favorable  locations  for  trade  on  the  caravan 
routes.78 

The  nature-made  necessity  of  scattering  in  small  groups  Spirit  of  In- 
to seek  pasturage  induces  in  the  nomad  a  spirit  of  indepen-  ^P®11^6110® 
dence.  The  Bedouin  is  personally  free.  The  power  of  the  * 
sheik  is  only  nominal,'9  and  depends  much  upon  his  personal 
qualities.  The  gift  of  eloquence  among  the  ancient  Arabs 
has  been  attributed  to  the  necessity  of  persuading  a  people 
to  whom  restraint  was  irksome.80  Political  organization  is 
conspicuously  lacking  among  the  Tibbus  of  the  Sahara81 
and  the  Turkoman  tribes  of  the  Trans-Caspian  steppes. 
"We  are  a  people  without  a  head,"  they  say.  The  title  of 
sheik  is  an  empty  one.  Custom  and  usage  are  their  rulers.82 
Though  the  temporary  union  of  nomadic  tribes  forms  an 
effective  army,  the  union  is  short-lived.  Groups  form,  dis- 
solve and  re-form,  with  little  inner  cohesion.  The  Boers  in 
South  African  grasslands  showed  the  same  development.  The 
government  of  the  Dutch  East  India  Company  in  Cape 
Colony  found  it  difficult  to  control  the  wandering  cattlemen 
of  the  interior  plateau.  They  loved  independence  and  isola- 
tion; their  dissociative  instincts,  bred  by  the  lonely  life 
of  the  thin-pastured  veldt,  were  overcome  only  by  the 
necessity  of  defense  against  the  Bushmen.  Then  they  organ- 
ized themselves  into  commandos  and  sallied  out  on  punitive 
expeditions,  like  the  Cossack  tribes  of  the  Don  against 
marauding  Tartars.  Scattered  over  wide  tracts  of  pasture 
land,  they  were  exempt  from  the  control  of  either  Dutch  or 
English  authority;  but  when  an  energetic  administration 
pursued  them  into  their  widespread  ranches,  they  eluded 


498  PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

control  by  trekking.83  Here  was  the  independent  spirit  of 
the  steppe,  reinforced  by  the  spirit  of  the  frontier. 

Resistance  Though  the  desert  and  steppe  have  bred  conquerors,  they 

to  con-  are  the  last  parts  of  the  earth's  surface  to  yield  to  conquest 

quest.  from   without.      The   untameable    spirit    of    freedom    in    the 

shepherd  tribes  finds  an  ally  against  aggression  in  the  track- 
less sands,  meager  water  and  food  supply  of  their  wilderness. 
Pursuit  of  the  retreating  tribesmen  is  dangerous  and  often 
futile.  They  need  only  to  burn  off  the  pasture  and  fill  up 
or  pollute  the  water-holes  to  cripple  the  transportation  and 
commissariat  of  the  invading  army.  This  is  the  way  the 
Damaras  have  fought  the  German  subjugation  of  Southwest 
Africa.84  Moreover,  the  paucity  of  economic  and  political 
possibilities  in  deserts  and  grasslands  discourages  conquest. 
Conquest  pays  only  where  it  is  a  police  measure  to  check 
depredations  on  the  bordering  agricultural  lands,  or  where 
such  barren  areas  are  transit  lands  to  a  desirable  territory 
beyond.  It  is  chiefly  the  "Gates  of  Herat"  and  the  lure  of 
India  which  have  drawn  Russian  dominion  across  the  scorched 
plains  of  Turkestan.  France  has  assumed  the  big  task  of 
controlling  the  Sahara  to  secure  a  safe  passway  between 
French  Tunisia  and  the  rich  Niger  basin  of  the  French  Sudan. 
The  recent  British-Egyptian  expansion  southward  across  the 
Nubian  steppes  had  for  its  objective  the  better  watered  dis- 
tricts of  the  upper  Nile  above  Khartum.  This  desert  ad- 
vance is  essentially  a  latter  day  phenomenon,  the  outcome 
of  modern  territorial  standards ;  it  is  attended  or  secured  by 
the  railroad.  To  this  fact  the  projected  Trans-Saharan  line 
is  the  strongest  witness. 

Nature  everywhere  postpones,  obstructs,  jeopardizes  the 
political  conquest  of  arid  lands.  The  unstable,  fanatical 
tribesmen  of  the  Egyptian  Sudan,  temporarily  but  effectively 
united  under  the  Mahdi,  made  it  necessary  for  Kitchener  to 
do  again  in  1898  the  work  of  subjugation  which  Gordon  had 
done  thirty  years  before.  The  body  of  the  Arabian  people  is 
still  free.  The  Turkish  sovereignty  over  them  to-day  is 
nominal,  rather  an  alliance  with  a  people  whom  it  is  danger- 
ous to  provoke  and  difficult  to  attack.  Only  the  coast  pro- 
vinces of  Hejaz,  Yemen  and  Hasa  are  subject  to  Turkey, 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  499 

while  the  tribes  of  the  interior  and  of  the  southeastern  sea- 
board are  wholly  independent.85  The  Turkoman  tribes  of 
Trans-Caspia  have  been  subordinated  to  Russia  largely  by  a 
process  of  extermination. SG  China  is  satisfied  with  a  nominal 
dominion  over  the  roaming  populations  of  Mongolia  and 
Chinese  Turkestan.  The  French  pacification  and  control  of 
Northwest  Africa  meets  a  peculiar  problem,  due  to  the  ex- 
treme restlessness  and  restiveness  of  the  dominant  Arab  race. 
The  whole  population  is  unstable  as  water;  a  disturbance  or 
movement  in  one  tribe  is  soon  communicated  to  the  whole 
mass.87 

The  steppe  or  desert  policy  for  the  curtailment  of  nomad-  Curtail- 

ism,   and   the   reclamation   of  both   land    and   people   is   to 

nomadism. 

encourage  or  enforce  sedentary  life.  The  French,  to  settle 
the  wandering  tribes  on  the  Atlas  border  of  the  Sahara,  have 
opened  a  vast  number  of  artesian  wells  through  the  agency 
of  skillful  engineers,  and  thus  created  oases  in  which  the 
fecund  sands  support  abundant  date-palm  groves.88  The 
method  pursued  energetically  by  the  Russians  is  to  compress 
the  tribes  into  ever  narrowing  limits  of  territory,  taking  away 
their  area  of  plunder  and  then  so  restricting  their  pasture 
lands,  that  they  are  forced  to  the  drudgery  of  irrigation  and 
tillage.  In  this  way  the  Yomuts  and  Goklans  occupying 
the  Caspian  border  of  Trans-Caspia  have  been  compelled  to 
abandon  their  old  marauding,  nomadic  life  and  become  to 
some  extent  agriculturists.89  The  method  of  the  Chinese  is  to 
push  forward  the  frontier  of  agricultural  settlement  into  the 
grasslands,  dislodging  the  shepherd  tribes  into  poorer  pas- 
tures. They  have  thus  reclaimed  for  grain  and  poppy  fields 
considerable  parts  of  the  Ordos  country  in  the  great  northern 
bend  of  the  Hoangho,  which  used  to  be  a  nursery  for  nomadic 
invaders.  A  similar  substitution  of  agriculture  for  pastoral 
nomadism  of  another  type  has  in  recent  decades  taken  place 
in  the  semi-arid  plains  of  the  American  West.  Sheep-grazing 
on  open  range  was  with  difficulty  dislodged  from  the  San 
Joaquin  Valley  of  California  by  expanding  farms  in  the  six- 
ties. More  recently  "dry  farming"  and  scientific  agriculture 
adapted  to  semi-arid  conditions  have  "pushed  the  desert  off 
the  map"  in  Kansas,  and  advanced  the  frontier  of  tillage 


500 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 


Supplemen- 
tary agri- 
culture of 
pastoral 
nomads. 


across  the  previous  domain  of  natural  pastures  to  the  western 
border  of  the  state. 

Pastoral  nomadism  has  been  gradually  dislodged  from 
Europe,  except  in  the  salt  steppes  of  the  Caspian  depression, 
where  a  vast  tract,  300,000  square  miles  in  area  and  wholly 
unfit  for  agriculture,  still  harbors  a  sparse  population  of 
Asiatic  Kalmuck  and  Kirghis  hordes,  leading  the  life  of  the 
Asiatic  steppes.90  In  Asia,  too,  the  regions  of  pastoral  no- 
madism have  been  curtailed,  but  in  Africa  they  still  maintain 
for  the  most  part  the  growing,  expanding  geographical  forms 
which  they  once  showed  in  Europe,  when  nomadism  prevailed 
as  far  as  the  Alps  and  the  Rhine.  In  Africa  shepherd  tribes 
cover  not  only  the  natural  grasslands,  but  lap  over  into  many 
districts  destined  by  nature  for  agriculture.  Hence  it  is  safe 
to  predict  that  a  conspicuous  part  of  the  future  economic 
and  cultural  history  of  the  Dark  Continent  will  consist  in  the 
release  of  agricultural  regions  from  nomad  occupancy  and 
dominion. 

Though  agriculture  is  regarded  with  contempt  and  aver- 
sion by  pastoral  nomads  and  is  resorted  to  for  a  livelihood 
only  when  they  lose  their  herds  by  a  pest  or  robbery,  or  find 
their  pasture  lands  seriously  curtailed,  nevertheless  nomadism 
yields  such  a  precarious  and  monotonous  subsistence  that  it 
is  not  infrequently  combined  with  a  primitive,  shifting  tillage. 
The  Kalmucks  of  the  Russian  steppes  employ  men  to  harvest 
hay  for  the  winter  feeding.  The  Nogai  Tartars  practice  a 
little  haphazard  tillage  on  the  alluvial  hem  of  the  steppe 
streams.81  Certain  Arab  tribes  living  east  of  the  Atbara  and 
Gash  Rivers  resort  with  their  herds  during  the  dry  season 
to  the  fruitful  region  of  Cassala,  which  is  inundated  by  the 
drainage  streams  from  Abyssinia,  and  there  they  cultivate 
dourra  and  other  grains.92  The  Bechuana  tribes  inhabiting 
the  rich,  streamless  grassland  of  the  so-called  Kalahari 
Desert  rear  small  herds  of  goats  and  cultivate  melons  and 
pumpkins;  among  the  other  Bechuana  tribes  on  the  eastern 
margin  of  the  desert,  the  men  hunt,  herd  the  cattle  and  milk 
the  cows,  while  the  women  raise  dourra,  maize,  pumpkins,  mel- 
ons, cucumbers  and  beans.88  [Compare  maps  pages  105,  487.] 

Such   supplementary   agriculture  usually   shifts   with  the 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  501 

nomad  group.  But  where  high  mountains  border  rainless 
tracts,  their  piedmont  districts  regularly  develop  permanent 
cultivation.  Here  periodic  rains  or  melting  snows  on  the 
ranges  fill  the  drainage  streams,  whose  inundation  often  con- 
verts their  alluvial  banks  into  ready-made  fields.  The  relia- 
bility of  the  water  supply  anchors  here  the  winter  villages  of 
the  nomads,  which  become  centers  of  a  limited  agriculture, 
while  the  pasture  lands  beyond  the  irrigated  strips 
support  his  flocks  and  herds.  Where  the  piedmont  of  the 
Kuen  Lun  Mountains  draws  a  zone  of  vegetation  around  the 
southern  rim  of  the  Takla  Makan  Desert,  Mongol  shepherds 
raise  some  wheat,  maize  and  melons  as  an  adjunct  to  their 
cattle  and  sheep ;  but  their  tillage  is  often  rendered  intermit- 
tent by  the  salinity  of  the  irrigating  streams. 9*  Along  the 
base  of  the  Tian  Shan  Mountains,  the  felt  yurt  of  the  Gobi 
nomad  gives  place  to  Turki  houses  with  wheat  and  rice  fields, 
and  orchards  of  various  fruits;  so  that  the  whole  piedmont 
highway  from  Hami  to  Yarkand  presents  an  alternation  of 
desert  and  oasis  settlement.95  Even  the  heart  of  arid  Arabia 
shows  fertile  oases  under  cultivation  where  the  lofty  Nejd 
Plateau,  with  its  rain-gathering  peaks  over  five  thousand 
feet  high,  varies  its  wide  pastures  with  well  tilled  valleys 
abounding  in  grain  fields  and  date-palm  groves.86  Along  the 
whole  Saharan  slope  of  the  Atlas  piedmont  a  series  of  paral- 
lel wadis  and,  farther  out  in  the  desert,  a  zone  of  artesian 
wells,  sunk  to  the  underground  bed  of  hidden  drainage 
streams  from  the  same  range,  form  oases  which  are  the  seat 
of  permanent  agriculture  and  more  or  less  settled  populations. 
The  Saharan  highlands  of  Tibesti,  whose  mountains  rise  to 
8,300  feet,  condense  a  little  rain  and  permit  the  Tibbus  to 
raise  some  grain  and  dates  in  the  narrow  valleys.97 

The  few  and  limited  spots  where  the  desert  or  steppe  affords  Irrigation 
water  for  cultivation  require  artificial  irrigation,  the  importa-  a 
tion  of  plants,  and  careful  tillage,  to  make  the  limited  area 
support  even  a  small  social  group.     Hence  they  could  have 
been  utilized  by  man  only  after  he  had  made  considerable 
progress  in  civilization.98     Oasis  agriculture  is  predominantly 
intensive.  Gardens  and  orchards  tend  to  prevail  over  field  til- 
lage.    The  restricted  soil  and  water  must  be  forced  to  yield 


502  PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

their  utmost.  While  on  the  rainy  or  northern  slope  of  the 
Atlas  in  Algiers  and  Tunis  farms  abound,  on  the  Saharan 
piedmont  are  chiefly  plantations  of  vegetables,  orchards  and 
palm  groves.09  In  Fezzan  at  the  oasis  of  Ghat,  Barth  found 
kitchen  gardens  of  considerable  extent,  large  palm  groves, 
but  limited  fields  of  grain,  all  raised  by  irrigation ;  and  in 
the  flat  hollow  basin  forming  the  oasis  of  Murzuk,  he  found 
also  fig  and  peach  trees,  vegetables,  besides  fields  of  wheat 
and  barley  cultivated  with  much  labor.loc  In  northern 
Fezzan,  where  the  mountains  back  of  Tripoli  provide  a  supply 
of  water,  saffron  and  olive  trees  are  the  staple  articles  of 
tillage.  The  slopes  are  terraced  and  irrigated,  laid  out  in 
orchards  of  figs,  pomegranates,  almonds  and  grapes,  while 
fields  of  wheat  and  barley  border  the  lower  courses  of  the 
wadis.101  In  the  "cup  oases"  or  depressions  of  the  Sahara, 
the  village  is  always  built  on  the  slope,  because  the  alluvial 
soil  in  the  basin  is  too  precious  to  be  used  for  house  sites.105 
Effect  of  The  water-supply  in  deserts  and  steppes,  on  which  perma- 

diminishing  nent  agriculture  depends,  is  so  scant  that  even  a  slight  diminu- 
SUPP  ?•  ^on  causes  the  area  of  tillage  to  shrink.  Here  a  fluctuation 
of  snowfall  or  rainfall  that  in  a  moist  region  would  be 
negligible,  has  conspicuous  or  even  tragic  results.  English 
engineers  who  examined  the  utilization  of  the  Afghan  streams 
for  irrigation  reported  that  the  natives  had  exploited  their 
water  supply  to  the  last  drop ;  that  irrigation  converted  the 
Kabul  River  and  the  Heri-rud  at  certain  seasons  of  the  year  in- 
to dry  channels.103  In  the  Turkoman  steppes  it  has  been  ob- 
served that  expanding  tillage,  by  the  multiplication  of  irri- 
gation canals,  increased  the  loss  of  water  by  evaporation, 
and  hence  diminished  the  supply.  Facts  like  these  reveal  the 
narrow  margin  between  food  and  famine,  which  makes  the 
uncertain  basis  of  life  for  the  steppe  agriculturist.  Even 
slight  desiccation  contracts  the  volume  and  shortens  the  course 
of  interior  drainage  streams;  therefore  it  narrows  the  pied- 
mont zone  of  vegetation  and  the  hem  of  tillage  along  the  river 
banks.  The  previous  frontier  of  field  and  garden  is  marked 
by  abandoned  hamlets  and  sand-buried  cities,  like  those  which 
border  the  dry  beds  of  the  shrunken  Khotan  rivers  of  the 
Tarim  basin.104  The  steppe  regions  in  the  New  World 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  503 

as  well  as  the  Old  show  great  numbers  of  these  ruins. 
Barth  found  them  in  the  northern  Sahara,  dating  from 
Roman  days.105  They  occur  in  such  numbers  in  the 
Syrian  Desert,  in  the  Sistan  of  Persia,  in  Baluchistan,  the 
Gobi,  Takla  Makan  Desert,  Turfan  and  the  Lop  Nor  basin, 
that  they  indicate  a  marked  but  irregular  desiccation  of 
central  and  western  Asia  during  the  historical  period.10( 

If  a  scant  water  supply  places  sedentary  agriculture  in  Scant  diet 
arid  lands  upon  an  insecure  basis,  it  makes  the  nomad's  of  nomads' 
sources  of  subsistence  even  more  precarious.  It  keeps  him 
persistently  on  low  rations,  while  the  drought  that  burns 
his  pastures  and  dries  up  well  and  wadi  brings  him  face  to 
face  with  famine.  The  daily  food  of  the  Bedouin  is  meal 
cooked  in  sour  camel's  milk,  to  which  bread  and  meat  are 
added  only  when  guests  arrive.  His  moderation  in  eating 
is  so  great  that  one  meal  of  a  European  would  suffice  for  six 
Arabs.107  The  daily  food  of  the  shepherd  agriculturists  on 
the  Kuen  Lun  margin  of  the  Takla  Makan  Desert  is  bread 
and  milk;  meat  is  indulged  in  only  three  or  four  times  a 
month.108  The  Tartars,  even  in  their  days  of  widest  conquest, 
showed  the  same  habitual  frugality.  "Their  victuals  are  all 
things  that  may  be  eaten,  for  we  saw  some  of  them  eat  lice." 
The  flesh  of  all  animals  dying  a  natural  death  is  used  as 
food;  in  summer  it  is  sun-dried  for  winter  use,  because  at 
that  time  the  Tartars  live  exclusively  on  mare's  milk  which 
is  then  abundant.  A  cup  or  two  of  milk  in  the  morning  suf- 
fices till  evening,  when  each  man  has  a  little  meat.  One 
ram  serves  as  a  meal  for  fifty  or  a  hundred  men.  Bones  are 
gnawed  till  they  are  burnished,  "so  that  no  whit  of  their  food 
may  come  to  naught."  Genghis  Khan  enacted  that  neither 
blood  nor  entrails  nor  any  other  part  of  a  beast  which  might 
be  eaten  should  be  thrown  away.105  Scarcity  of  food  among 
the  Tibetan  and  Mongolian  nomads  is  reflected  in  their  habit 
of  removing  every  particle  of  meat  from  the  bone  when  eat- 
ing.110 A  thin  decoction  of  hot  tea,  butter  and  flour  is  their 
staple  food.  Many  Turkoman  nomads,  despite  outward  ap- 
pearance of  wealth,  eat  only  dried  fish,  and  get  bread  only 
once  a  month,  while  for  the  poor  wheat  is  prohibited  on  ac- 
count of  its  cost.111  The  Saharan  Tibbus,  usually  on  a 


504 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 


Checks  to 
population. 


Trade  of 
nomads. 


starvation  diet,  eat  the  skin  and  powdered  bones  of  their 
dead  animals.112 

The  privations  and  hardships  of  life  in  the  deserts  and 
steppes  discourage  obesity.  The  Koko-Nor  Mongols  of  the 
high  Tibetan  plateau  are  of  slight  build,  never  fat.115  The 
Bedouin's  physical  ideal  of  a  man  is  spare,  sinewy,  energetic 
and  vigorous,  "lean-sided  and  thin,"  as  the  Arab  poet  ex- 
presses it.114  The  nomadic  tribesmen  throughout  the  Sahara, 
whether  of  Hamitic,  Semitic  or  Negro  race,  show  this  type, 
and  retain  it  even  after  several  generations  of  settlement  in 
the  river  valleys  of  the  Sudan.  The  Bushmen,  who  inhabit 
the  Kalahari  Desert,  have  thin  wiry  forms  and  are  capable 
of  great  exertion  and  privations.115 

Though  the  conquering  propensities  of  nomadic  tribes 
make  large  families  desirable,  in  order  to  increase  the  mili- 
tary strength  of  the  horde,  and  though  shepherd  folk  ac- 
quiring new  and  rich  pastures  develop  patriarchal  families, 
as  did  the  Jews  after  the  conquest  of  Canaan,  nevertheless 
the  limited  water  and  food  supply  of  desert  and  grassland, 
as  well  as  the  relatively  low-grade  economy  of  pastoral  life, 
impose  an  iron-bound  restriction  upon  population,  so  that 
as  a  matter  of  fact  patriarchal  families  are  rare.  When 
natural  increase  finds  no  vent  in  emigration  and  dispersal, 
marriage  among  nomads  becomes  less  fruitful.11*  Artificial 
limitation  of  population  occurs  frequently  among  desert- 
dwellers.  In  the  Libyan  oasis  of  Farafeah,  the  inhabitants 
never  exceed  eighty  males,  a  limit  fixed  by  a  certain  Sheik 
Murzuk.li;  Poverty  of  food  supply  explains  the  small 
number  of  children  in  the  typical  Turkoman  family.  Among 
the  Koko-Nor  Tibetans,  monogamy  is  the  rule,  polygamy  the 
exception  and  confined  to  the  few  rich,  while  families  never 
include  more  than  two  or  three  children.11'  According  to 
Burckhardt,  three  children  constitute  a  large  family  among 
the  Bedouins,  much  to  the  regret  of  the  Bedouins  themselves. 
Mohammedans  though  they  are,  few  practice  polygamy,  while 
polyandry  and  female  infanticide  existed  in  heathen  times.111 
Desert  peoples  seem  to  be  naturally  monogamous.120 

The  prevailing  poverty,  monotony  and  unreliability  of 
subsistence  in  desert  and  steppe,  as  well  as  the  low  industrial 


505 

status,  necessitate  trade  with  bordering  agricultural  lands. 
The  Bedouins  of  Arabia  buy  flour,  barley  for  horse  feed, 
coffee  and  clothing,  paying  for  them  largely  with  butter  and 
male  colts.  The  northern  tribes  resort  every  year  to  the 
confines  of  Syria,  when  they  are  visited  by  pedlers  from 
Damascus  and  Aleppo.121  The  tribes  from  Hasa  and  the 
Nejd  pasture  land  bring  horses,  cattle  and  sheep  to  the  city 
of  Koweit  at  the  head  of  the  Persian  Gulf  to  barter  for 
dates,  clothing  and  firearms ;  and  large  encampments  of  them 
are  always  to  be  seen  near  this  town.125  Arabia  and  the 
Desert  of  Kedar  sold  lambs,  rams  and  goats  to  the  markets 
of  ancient  Tyre/23  The  pastoral  tribes  of  ancient  Judea  in  ^y ' 
times  of  scarcity  went  to  Egypt  for  grain,  which  they  pur- 
chased either  with  money  or  cattle.  The  picture  of  Jacob's 
sons  returning  from  Egypt  to  Canaan  with  their  long  lines 
of  asses  laden  with  sacks  of  corn  is  typical  for  pastoral 
nomads ;  so  is  their  ultimate  settlement,  owing  to  protracted 
famine,  in  the  delta  land  of  Goshen.  The  Kirghis  of  the 
Russian  and  Asiatic  steppes  barter  horses  and  sheep  for 
cereals,  fine  articles  of  clothing,  and  coarse  wooden  utensils 
in  the  cities  of  Bukhara  and  the  border  districts  of  Russia. 
Occasionally  the  land  of  the  nomad  yields  other  products 
than  those  of  the  flocks  and  herds,  which  enter  therefore  into 
their  trade.  Such  is  the  salt  of  the  Sahara,  secured  at  Tau- 
deni  and  Bilma,  the  gums  of  the  Indus  desert,  and  balm  of 
Gilead  from  the  dry  plateau  east  of  Jordan. 

The    systematic    migrations    of    nomads,   their   numerous  Pastoral 
beasts  of  burden,  and  the  paucity-  of  desert  and  steppe  pro- 


124 


ducts  determine  pastoral  tribes  for  the  office  of  middlemen ; 
and  as  such  they  appear  in  all  parts  of  the  world.  The 
contrast  of  products  in  arid  regions  and  in  the  bordering 
agricultural  land,  as  also  in  the  districts  on  opposite  sides 
of  these  vast  barriers,  stimulates  exchanges.  This  contrast 
may  rest  on  a  difference  of  geographic  conditions,  or  of 
economic  development,  or  both.  The  reindeer  Chukches  of 
Arctic  Siberia  take  Russian  manufactured  wares  from  the 
fur  stations  on  the  Lena  River  to  trade  at  the  coast  markets 
on  Bering  Sea  for  Alaskan  pelts.  The  sons  of  Jacob,  pastur- 
ing their  flocks  on  the  Judean  plateau,  saw  "a  company  of 


nomads  as 
middlemen. 


506  PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

Ishmaelites  come  from  Gilead  with  their  camels  bearing 
spicery  and  balm  and  myrrh,  going  to  carry  it  down  to 
Egypt."125  This  caravan  of  Arabian  merchants  purchased 
Joseph  as  a  slave,  a  characteristic  commodity  in  desert  com- 
merce from  ancient  times  to  the  present.  The  predatory  ex- 
peditions of  nomads  provide  them  with  abundant  captives, 
only  few  of  which  can  be  utilized  as  slaves  in  their  pastoral 
economy.  In  the  same  way  the  Kirghis  manage  the  caravan 
trade  between  Russia  and  Bukhara,  sometimes  adding  cap- 
tured travelers  to  their  other  wares.  In  ancient  times 
Nubian  shepherd  folk  acted  as  migrant  middlemen  between 
Egypt  and  Meroe  near  the  junction  of  the  Atbara  River  and 
the  Nile,  as  did  also  the  desert  tribe  of  the  Nasamones  between 
Carthage  and  interior  Africa.12'  From  remote  ages  an  active 
caravan  trade  was  carried  on  between  the  productive  districts 
of  Arabia  Felix  and  the  cities  of  Mesopotamia,  Syria  and 
Egypt.  Mohammed  himself  was  a  caravan  leader;  in  the 
faith  which  he  established  religious  pilgrimages  and  com- 
mercial ventures  were  inextricably  united,  while  to  the  mer- 
cantile spirit  it  gave  a  fresh  and  vigorous  impetus.127  The 
caravan  trade  of  the  Sahara  was  first  organized  by  Moorish 
and  Arab  tribes  who  dwelt  on  the  northern  margin  of  the 
desert,  rearing  herds  of  camels.  These  they  hired  to  mer- 
chants for  the  journey  between  Morocco  and  Timbuctoo,  in 
return  for  cereals  and  clothing.  Hence  Morocco  has  been 
the  chief  customer  of  the  great  desert  town  near  the  Niger, 
and  sends  thither  numerous  caravans  from  Tendouf  (Tare- 
dant)  Morocco,  Fez  and  Tafilet.  Algiers  dominates  the 
less  important  route  via  the  oasis  of  Twat,  and  Tripolis  that 
through  Ghadames  to  the  busy  towns  in  the  Lake  Chad 
basin.128 

Desert  If  the  camel  is  "the  ship  of  the  desert,"  the  market  towns 

markets.  On  the  margin  of  the  sandy  wastes  are  the  ports  of  the  desert. 
Their  bazaars  hold  everything  that  the  nomad  needs.  Their 
suburbs  are  a  shifting  series  of  shepherd  encampments  or 
extensive  caravanseries  for  merchant  and  pack  animal,  like 
the  abaradion  of  Timbuctoo,  which  receives  annually  from 
fifty  to  sixty  thousand  camels.125  Their  industries  develop 
partly  in  response  to  the  demand  of  the  desert  or  trans- 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  507 

desert  population.  The  fine  blades  of  Damascus  reflected  the 
Bedouin's  need  of  the  best  weapon.  Each  city  has  its  sphere 
of  desert  influence.  The  province  of  Nejd  in  Central  Arabia 
is  commercially  subservient  to  Bagdad,  Busrah,  Koweit  and 
Bahrein.130  The  bazaars  of  Samarkand  and  Tashkent  exist 
largely  for  the  scattered  nomads  of  Turkestan.  Ancient 
Gaza131  and  Askelon  fattened  on  the  Egyptian  trade  across 
the  Desert  of  Shur,  as  Petra,  Bostra  and  Damascus  on  the 
thin  but  steady  streams  of  nomad  products  flowing  in  from 
the  Syrian  Desert. 

The  abundant  leisure  of  nomadic  life  encourages  the  begin-  Nomad  in- 
ning of  industry,  but  rarely  advances  it  beyond  the  house-  dustries. 
hold  stage,  owing  to  the  thin,  family-wise  dispersion  of  popu- 
lation which  precludes  division  of  labor.  Such  industry  as 
exists  consists  chiefly  in  working  up  the  raw  materials  yielded 
by  the  herds.  Among  the  Bedouins,  blacksmiths  and  sad- 
dlers are  the  only  professional  artisans ;  these  are  regarded 
with  contempt  and  are  never  of  Bedouin  stock.132  In  the 
ancient  world,  industry  reached  its  zero  point  in  Arabia,  and 
in  modern  times  shows  meager  development  there.  On  the 
other  hand  the  Saharan  Arabs  developed  an  hereditary  guild 
of  expert  well-makers,  which  seems  to  date  back  to  remote 
times,  and  is  held  in  universal  honor.133 

It  is  to  the  tent-dwellers  of  the  world,  however,  that  we  ap-  Oriental 
parently  owe  the  oriental  rug.  This  triumph  of  the  weaver's  art  ruS8- 
seems  to  have  originated  among  pastoral  nomads,  who  devel- 
oped it  in  working  up  the  wool  and  hair  of  their  sheep,  goats 
and  camels;  but  it  early  became  localized  as  a  specialized  in- 
dustry in  the  towns  and  villages  of  irrigated  districts  on  the 
borders  of  the  grazing  lands,  where  the  nomads  had  advanced 
to  sedentary  life.  Therefore  in  the  period  of  the  Caliphate, 
from  632  to  1258,  we  find  these  brilliant  flowers  of  the  loom, 
blooming  like  the  Persian  gardens,  in  Persian  Farsistan, 
Khusistan,  Kirman  and  Khorasan.  We  find  them  spreading 
the  mediaeval  fame  of  Shiraz,  Tun,  Meshed,  Amul,  Bukhara 
and  Merv.  The  secret  of  this  preeminence  lay  partly  in  the 
weaver's  inherited  aptitude  and  artistic  sense  for  this  textile 
work,  derived  from  countless  generations  of  shepherd  ances- 
tors; partly  in  their  proximity  to  the  finest  raw  materials, 


508 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 


Archi- 
tecture of 
nomad 
conquer- 
on. 


whose  quality  was  equalled  nowhere  else,  because  it  depended 
upon  the  character  of  the  pasturage,  probably  also  upon  the 
climatic  conditions  affecting  directly  the  flocks  and  herds.134 

A  map  showing  the  geographical  distribution  of  Eastern 
rug-making  reveals  the  relation  of  the  industry  to  semi-arid 
or  saline  pastures,  and  makes  the  mind  revert  at  once  to  the 
blankets  of  artistic  design  and  color,  woven  by  the  Navajo 
Indians  of  our  own  rainless  Southwest.  Rug  weaving  in  the 
Old  World  reached  its  finest  development  in  countries  like 
Persia,  Turkestan,  western  Afghanistan,  Baluchistan,  western 
India  and  the  plateau  portions  of  Asia  Minor,  countries 
where  the  rainfall  varies  from  10  to  20  inches  or  even  less, 
[See  map  page  484.]  where  nomadism  claims  a  considerable 
part  of  the  population,  and  where  the  ancestry  of  all  traces 
back  to  some  of  the  great  shepherd  races,  like  Turkomans  and 
Tartars.  These  peoples  are  hereditary  specialists  in  the  care, 
classification,  and  preparation  of  wools. 13£  Weavers  of  rugs 
form  an  industrial  class  in  the  cities  of  Persia  and  Asia  Minor, 
where  they  obey  largely  the  taste  of  the  outside  world  in  re- 
gard to  design  and  color;136  whereas  the  nomads,  weaving  for 
their  own  use,  adhere  strictly  to  native  colors  and  designs. 
Their  patterns  are  tribal  property,  each  differing  from  that  of 
the  other;  and  though  less  artistic  than  those  of  the  urban 
workers,  are  nevertheless  interesting  and  consistent,  while  the 
nomad's  intuitive  sense  of  color  is  fine.13' 

The  principles  of  design  and  color  which  these  tent-dwel- 
lers had  developed  in  their  weaving,  they  applied,  after  their 
conquest  of  agricultural  lands,  to  stone  and  produced  the 
mosaic,  to  architecture  and  produced  the  Alhambra  and  the 
Taj  Mahal.13*  Whether  Saracens  of  Spain  or  Turkoman 
conquerors  of  India,  they  were  ornamentists  whose  contribu- 
tion to  architecture  was  decoration.  Working  in  marble, 
stone,  metals  or  wood,  they  wrought  always  in  the  spirit  of 
color  and  textile  design,  rather  than  in  the  spirit  of  form. 
The  walls  of  their  mosques,  palaces  and  tombs  reproduce  the 
beauty  of  the  rugs  once  screening  the  doors  of  their  felt  tents. 
The  gift  of  color  they  passed  on  to  the  West,  first  through  the 
Moors  of  Sicily  and  Spain,  later  through  Venetian  commerce. 
Their  influence  can  be  seen  in  the  exquisite  mosaic  decoration 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  509 

in  the  cloister  of  Mont  Reale  of  once  Saracenic  Palermo,  and 
in  the  Ducal  Palace  and  St.  Mark's  Cathedral  of  beauty-loving 
Venice.13'  This  has  been  almost  their  sole  contribution  to  the 
art  of  the  world. 

Pastoral  nomads  can  give  political  union  to  civilized  peo- 
ples ;  they  can  assimilate  and  spread  ready-made  elements  of 
civilization,  but  to  originate  or  develop  them  they  are  power- 
less. Between  the  art,  philosophy  and  literature  of  China  on 
the  one  side,  and  of  the  settled  districts  of  Persia  on  the  other, 
lies  the  cultural  sterility  of  the  Central  Asia  plateau.  Its 
outpouring  hordes  have  only  in  part  acquired  the  civilization 
of  the  superior  agricultural  peoples  whom  they  have  con- 
quered ;  from  Kazan  and  Constantinople  to  Delhi,  from  Delhi 
to  Peking  they  have  added  almost  nothing  to  the  local  culture. 

Deserts  and  steppes  lay  an  arresting  hand  on  progress.  Arid  lands 
Their  tribes  do  not  develop ;  neither  do  they  grow  old.  They  as  areas  of 
are  the  eternal  children  of  the  world.  Genuine  nomadic  a 
peoples  show  no  alteration  in  their  manners,  customs  or  mode 
of  life  from  millennium  to  millennium.  The  interior  of  the 
Arabian  desert  reveals  the  same  social  and  economic  status,140 
whether  we  take  the  descriptions  of  Moses  or  Mohammed  or 
Burckhardt  or  more  recent  travelers.  The  Bedouins  of  the 
Nubian  steppes  adhere  strictly  to  all  their  ancient  customs, 
and  reproduce  to-day  the  pastoral  nomadism  of  Abraham  and 
Jacob.141  Genealogies  were  not  more  important  to  the  biblical 
house  of  David  and  stem  of  Jesse  than  they  are  for  the  modern 
Kirghis  tribesman,  who  as  a  little  child  learns  to  recite  the 
list  of  his  ancestors  back  to  the  seventh  generation.  The 
account  which  Herodotus  gives  of  the  nomads  of  the  Russian 
steppes  agrees  in  minute  details  with  that  of  Strabo  written 
five  centuries  later,142  with  that  of  William  de  Rubruquis  in 
1253,  and  with  modern  descriptions  of  Kalmuck  and  Kirghis 
life.  The  Gauchos  or  Indian  pastoral  halfbreeds  of  the  Argen- 
tine plains  were  found  by  Wappaus  in  1870  to  accord  accurately 
with  Avara's  description  of  them  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century.14*  The  restless  tenants  of  the  grasslands  come  and 
go,  but  their  type  never  materially  changes.  Their  culture 
is  stationary  amid  persistent  movement.  Only  when  here  or 
there  in  some  small  and  favored  spot  they  are  forced  to  make 


510 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 


Mental 
and  moral 
qualities 
of  nomads. 


the  transition  to  agriculture,  or  when  they  learn  by  long 
and  close  association  with  sedentary  nations  the  lesson  of 
drudgery  and  progress,  do  the  laws  of  social  and  economic 
development  begin  to  operate  in  them.  As  a  rule,  they  must 
first  escape  partly  or  wholly  the  environment  of  their  pasture 
lands,  either  by  emigration  or  by  the  intrusion  into  their 
midst  of  alien  tillers  of  the  soil. 

But  while  the  migrant  shepherd  originates  nothing,  he 
plays  an  historical  role  as  a  transmitter  of  civilization. 
Asiatic  nomads  have  sparsely  disseminated  the  culture  of 
China,  Persia,  Egypt  and  Yemen  over  large  areas  of  the 
world.  The  Semite  shepherds  of  the  Red  Sea  deserts,  through 
their  merchants  and  conquerors,  long  gave  to  the  dark 
Sudan  the  only  light  of  civilization  which  it  received.  Mo- 
hammed, a  Bedouin  of  the  Ishmaelite  tribe,  caravan  leader 
on  the  desert  highways  between  Mecca  and  Syria,  borrowed 
from  Jerusalem  the  simple  tenets  of  a  monotheistic  religion, 
and  spread  them  through  his  militant  followers  over  a  large 
part  of  Africa  and  Asia. 

The  deserts  and  grasslands  breed  in  their  sons  certain 
qualities  and  characteristics — courage,  hardihood,  the  stiff- 
necked  pride  of  the  freeman,  vigilance,  wariness,  sense  of 
locality,144  keen  powers  of  observation  stimulated  by  the 
monotonous,  featureless  environment,  and  the  consequent 
capacity  to  grasp  every  detail.145  Though  robbery  abroad 
is  honorable  and  marauder  a  term  with  which  to  crown  a 
hero,  theft  at  home  is  summarily  dealt  with  among  most  no- 
mads. The  property  of  the  unlocked  tent  and  the  far-rang- 
ing herd  must  be  safeguarded.148  The  Tartars  maintained 
a  high  standard  of  honesty  among  themselves  and  punished 
theft  with  death.147  Wide  dispersal  in  small  groups  is  re- 
flected in  the  diversity  of  dialects  among  desert  peoples;11" 
in  the  practice  of  hospitality,  whether  among  Bedouins  of 
the  Nejd,  Kirghis  of  the  Central  Asia  plateau,149  or  semi- 
nomadic  Boers  of  South  Africa  ;150  in  the  persistence  of  feuds 
and  of  the  duty  of  blood  revenge,  which  is  sanctioned  by  the 
Koran. 

Isolation  tends  to  breed  among  nomads  pride  of  race 
and  a  repugnance  to  intermixture.  The  ideal  of  the  pastoral 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  511 

Israelites  was  a  pure  ethnic  stock,  protected  by  stern  inhibi- 
tion of  intermarriage  with  other  tribes.  Therefore,  Moses 
enjoined  upon  them  the  duty  of  exterminating  the  peoples 
of  Canaan  whom  they  dispossessed.151  While  the  urban 
Arabs  show  a  medley  of  breeds,  dashed  with  a  strain  of  negro 
blood,  among  the  nomad  Bedouins,  mixture  is  exceptional 
and  is  regarded  as  a  disgrace.151  The  same  thing  is  true 
among  the  nomad  Arabs  of  Algeria,  and  there  it  has  placed 
a  stumbling  block  in  the  way  of  the  French  colonial  adminis- 
tration, by  preventing  the  appearance  of  half-breeds  who 
might  bridge  the  gap  between  the  colonials  and  natives. 
Where  pastoral  Semites  have  settled  in  agricultural  lands, 
inermixture  on  a  wide  scale  has  followed,  as  in  the  Sudan 
from  Niger  to  Nile;  but  even  here,  when  a  tribe  or  clan  has 
retained  a  strictly  pastoral  life  in  the  grassland,  and  has  held 
itself  aloof  from  the  agricultural  districts  of  the  Negro  vil- 
lages, relatively  pure  survivals  are  to  be  found,  as  among 
the  Cow  or  Bush  Fulani  of  Bornu.153  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Hausa,  a  migrant  trading  folk  of  mingled  Arab  and  Negro 
blood,  spread  northward  along  the  trans-Saharan  caravan 
route  to  the  oasis  of  Air  before  the  fourteenth  century,  and 
there  have  infused  into  the  local  Berber  stock  a  strong  Negro 
strain.154  Among  the  nomads  of  Central  Asia,  one  wave  of 
race  movement  has  so  often  followed  and  overtaken  another, 
that  it  has  produced  a  confused  blending  of  breeds.  The 
mixtures  are  so  numerous  that  pure  types  are  exceptional,155 
and  the  exclusiveness  of  the  desert  Semites  disappears. 

Though  all  these  desert-born  characteristics  and  customs  Religion 
have  a  certain  interest  for  the  sociologist,  they  possess  only  ° 
minor  importance  in  comparison  with  the  religious  spirit  of 
pastoral  nomads,  which  is  always  fraught  with  far-reaching 
historical  results.  The  evidence  of  history  shows  us  that  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  a  desert-born  genius  for  religion.  Hue 
and  Gabin  testify  to  the  deeper  religious  feeling  of  the  Budd- 
hist nomads  of  the  Central  Asia  plateaus,  as  compared  with 
the  lowland  Chinese.  The  three  great  monotheistic  religions 
of  the  world  are  closely  connected  in  their  origin  and  develop- 
ment with  the  deserts  of  Syria  and  Arabia.  The  area  of 
Mohammedism  embraces  the  steppe  zone  of  the  Old  World158 


512 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 


Fanati- 
cism as  a 
force  in 
nomad 
expansion. 


from  Senegambia  and  Zanzibar  in  Africa  to  the  Indus,  Tarim 
and  the  upper  Obi,  together  with  some  well  watered  lands  on 
its  margins.  It  comprises  in  this  territory  a  variety  of  races 
— Negroes,  Karaites,  Semites,  Iranians,  Indo-Aryans,  and  a 
long  list  of  Mongoloid  tribes.  Here  is  a  psychological  effect 
of  environment.  The  dry,  pure  air  stimulates  the  faculties 
of  the  desert-dweller,  but  the  featureless,  monotonous  sur- 
roundings furnish  them  with  little  to  work  upon.  The  mind, 
finding  scant  material  for  sustained  logical  deduction,  falls 
back  upon  contemplation.  Intellectual  activity  is  therefore 
restricted,  narrow,  unproductive;  while  the  imagination  is 
unfettered  but  also  unfed.  First  and  last,  these  shepherd 
folk  receive  from  the  immense  monotony  of  their  environment 
the  impression  of  unity.157  Therefore  all  of  them,  upon  out- 
growing their  primitive  fetish  and  nature  worship,  gravitate 
inevitably  into  monotheism.  Their  religion  is  in  accord  with 
their  whole  mental  make-up ;  it  is  a  growth,  a  natural  efflores- 
cence. Therefore  it  is  strong.  Its  tenets  form  the  warp  of 
all  their  intellectual  fabrics,  permeate  their  meager  science 
and  philosophy,  animate  their  more  glorious  poetry.  It  has 
moreover  the  fanaticism  and  intolerance  characterizing  men 
of  few  ideas  and  restricted  outlook  upon  life.  Therewith  is 
bound  up  a  spirit  of  propaganda.  The  victories  of  the  Jews 
in  Palestine,  Syria  and  Philistia  were  the  victories  of  Jehovah ; 
the  conquests  of  Saladin  were  the  conquests  of  Allah ;  and 
the  domain  of  the  Caliphate  was  the  dominion  of  Islam. 

The  desert  everywhere,  sooner  or  later,  drives  out  its 
brood,  ejects  its  people  and  their  ideas,  like  those  exploding 
seed-pods  which  at  a  touch  cast  their  seed  abroad.  The  reli- 
gious fanaticism  of  the  shepherd  tribes  gives  that  touch; 
herein  lies  its  historical  importance.  Mohammedism,  fierce 
and  militant,  conduced  to  those  upheavals  of  migration  and 
conquest  which  since  the  seventh  century  have  so  often  trans- 
formed the  political  geography  of  the  Old  World.  The  vast 
empire  of  the  Caliphate,  from  its  starting  point  in  Arabia, 
spread  in  eighty  years  from  the  Oxus  River  to  the  Atlantic 
Ocean.158  The  rapid  rise  and  spread  between  1745  and  1803 
of  the  Wahaby  clan  and  sect,  the  Puritans  of  Islam,  which 
resulted  for  a  time  in  their  political  and  religious  domination 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 


513 


514  PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

of  much  of  Arabia  from  their  home  in  the  Nejd,  recalls  the 
stormy  conquests  of  Mohammed's  followers.  Islam  is  to-day 
a  persistent  source  of  ferment  in  Algeria,  the  Sahara,  and 
the  Sudan.  On  the  other  hand,  Buddhism  serves  to  cement 
together  the  diverse  nomadic  tribes  of  the  Central  Asia 
plateaus,  and  keep  them  in  spiritual  subjection  to  the  Grand 
Lama  of  Lhassa.  The  Chinese  government  makes  political 
use  of  this  fact  by  dominating  the  Lama  and  employing  him 
as  a  tool  to  secure  quiet  on  its  long  frontier  of  contact  with 
its  restless  Mongol  neighbors.  Moreover  the  religion  of 
Buddha  has  restrained  the  warlike  spirit  of  the  nomads,  and 
by  its  institution  of  celibacy  has  helped  keep  down  population 
below  the  boiling-point.  [Compare  maps  pages  484  and  513.] 
The  faith  The  faith  of  the  desert  tends  to  be  stern,  simple  and 

of  the  austere.      The   indulgence   which   Mohammed   promised   his 

followers  in  Paradise  was  only  a  reflex  of  the  deprivation 
under  which  they  habitually  suffered  in  the  scant  pastures  of 
Arabia.  The  lavish  beauty  of  the  Heavenly  City  epitomized 
the  ideals  and  dreams  of  the  desert-stamped  Jew.  The  active, 
simple,  uncramped  life  of  the  grasslands  seems  essential  to 
the  preservation  of  the  best  virtues  of  the  desert-bred.  These 
disappear  largely  in  sedentary  life.  The  Bedouin  rots  when 
he  takes  root.  City  life  contaminates,  degrades  him.  His 
virile  qualities  and  his  religion  both  lose  their  best  when  he 
leaves  the  desert.  Contact  with  the  cities  of  Philistia  and  the 
fertile  plains  of  the  Canaanites,  with  their  sensual  agricultural 
gods,  demoralized  the  Israelites. 1C£  The  prophets  were  always 
calling  them  back  to  the  sterner  code  of  morals  and  the  purer 
faith  of  their  days  of  wandering.  Jeremiah  in  despair  holds 
up  to  them  as  a  standard  of  life  the  national  injunction  of  the 
pastoral  Rechabites,  "Neither  shall  ye  build  house  nor  sow 
corn  nor  plant  vineyard,  but  all  your  days  ye  shall  dwell  in 
tents."1  The  ascent  in  civilization  made  havoc  with  Hebrew 
morals  and  religion,  because  ethics  and  religion  are  the  finest 
and  latest  flower  of  each  cultural  stage.  Transition  shows 
the  breaking  down  of  one  code  before  the  establishment  of 
another. 

Judaism  has  always  suffered  from  its  narrow  local  base. 
Even  when  transplanted  to  various  parts  of  the  earth,  it  has 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  515 

remained  a  distinctly  tribal  religion.  Intense  conservatism 
in  doctrine  and  ceremonial  it  still  bears  as  the  heritage  of 
its  desert  birth.  Islam  too  shows  the  limitations  of  its 
original  environment.  It  embodies  a  powerful  appeal  to  the 
peoples  of  arid  lands,  and  among  these  it  has  spread  and 
survives  as  an  active  principle.  But  it  belongs  to  an  arrested 
economic  and  social  development,  lacks  the  germs  of  moral 
evolution  which  Christianity,  born  in  the  old  stronghold  of 
Hebraic  monotheism,  but  impregnated  by  all  the  cosmopolitan 
influences  of  the  Mediterranean  basin  and  the  Imperium 
Romanum,  amply  possesses. 

NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  XIV 

1.  Figures  taken  from  Albrecht  Penck,  Morphologic  der  Erdoberflache, 
Vol.  I,  p.  151.     Stuttgart,  1894. 

2.  A.  P.  Brigham,  Geographic  Influences  in  American  History,  Chap. 
IV.    Boston,  1903. 

3.  E.  C.  Semple,  American  History  and  Its  Geographic  Conditions,  pp. 
65-69,  230,  288,  385.     Boston,  1903. 

4.  Ibid.,  pp.  218,  221,  393. 

5.  H.  E.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  127.     New  York,  1902. 

6.  Henry  Buckle,  History  of  Civilization  in  England,  Vol.  II,  pp.  126- 
136.    New  York,  1871. 

7.  Carl    Eitter,    Comparative    Geography,    pp.    191-192,    201.      Phil- 
adelphia, 1865. 

8.  J.  H.  Breasted,  History  of  Egypt,  pp.  142,  144,  261-265,  293-302, 
513-517.     New  York,  1905. 

9.  IUd.,  6,  48,  93,  114,  119,  127,  134,  136,  163,  164,  182,  190,  191,  507. 

10.  W.  Z.  Eipley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  340-343,  map.    New  York,  1899. 

11.  Anatole  Leroy-Beaulieu,  The  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  Vol.  I,  pp.  57- 
60.     New  York,   1893. 

12.  W.  Z.  Eipley,  Eaces  of  Europe,  Maps,  pp.  53  and  66.     New  York, 
1899. 

13.  Hans   Helmolt,   History  of  the  World,  Vol.   VI,  p.   130,   map  of 
ancient  distribution  of  Germans  and  Celts.     New  York,  1907. 

14.  W.  Z.  Eipley,  Eaces  of  Europe,  pp.  218-218.     New  York,  1899. 

15.  Ibid.,  344-347,  356,  365. 

16.  Elisee  Eeclus,  Europe,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  309-310.     New  York,  1882. 

17.  Anatole  Leroy-Beaulieu,  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  Vol.  I,  p.  107.     New 
York,  1893. 

18.  H.   E.   Mill,   International   Geography,   pp.   220-222.      New   York, 
1902. 

19.  Vidal-Lablache,  Atlas  General,  Maps  pp.  63,  64,  93.     Paris,  1909. 

20.  H.  E.  Mill,  International  Geography,  174,  177-182.       New  York, 
1902. 

21.  Twelfth  Census,  Bulletin  of  Agriculture  No.   181,  p.  2,  compared 
with  Eleventh  Census,  Statistics  of  Population,  map  of  negro  distribu- 
tion, p.xcvu.     Washington,  1895. 


516  PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

22.  Twelfth  Census,  Bulletin  of  Agriculture,  No.  155,  p.  2.     Washing- 
ton, 1902. 

23.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  p.  353.    New  York,  1899. 

24.  Boyd  Alexander,  From  the  Niger  to  the  Nile,  Vol.  II,  p.  238.    Lon- 
don, 1907. 

25.  Haxthausen,  Studien,  Vol.   I,  p.   309.     Die  landliche   Verfassung 
Russlands,  pp.  3,  7.     Leipzig,  1866. 

26.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  II,  pp.   79-83.     London,   1896- 
1898.     J.  Wappaus,  Handbuch  der  Geographic  und  Statistik  des  ehema- 
ligen  spanischen  Mittel-  und  Sud-Amerika,  pp.  978-980,  1019.     Leipzig, 
1863-1870. 

27.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  II,  pp.  206-208.    London,  1896- 
1898. 

28.  Nordenskiold,  Voyage  of  the  Vega,  pp.  60,  156,  452.     New  York, 
1882.     Alexander  P.  Engelhardt,  A  Russian  Province  of  the  North,  pp. 
291-295.    London,  1899. 

29.  Ibid.,  pp.  83,  88-91. 

30.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  166-167.    London,  1896- 
1898. 

31.  James  Bryce,  Impressions  of  South  Africa,  p.   107.     New  York, 
1897. 

32.  Herodotus,  Melpomene,  19,  46. 

33.  Thomas  Hodgkin,  Italy  and  Her  Invaders,  Vol.  I,  p.  262.     Ox- 
ford, 1892. 

34  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  II,  p.  220.     London,  1896-1898. 

35.  Genesis,  XIII,  2,  5. 

36.  James  Bryce,  Impressions  of  South  Africa,  p.  474.     New  York, 
1897. 

37.  Eleventh  Census,  Indian  Report,  pp.  143-144.     Washington,  1894. 

38.  Sven  Hedin,  Central  Asia  and  Tibet,  Vol.  I,  pp.  18-20.     London 
and  New  York,  1903. 

39.  J.  L.  Burckhardt,  Notes  on  the  Bedouins  and  Wahabys,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
32-33.     London,  1831. 

40.  George  Adam  Smith,  Historical  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,  pp. 
8-10.    New  York,  1897. 

41.  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  Vol.  V,  pp.  78-79. 
New  York,  1858. 

42.  L.  March  Phillipps,  In  the  Desert,  p.  95.    London,  1905. 

43.  Sir  Samuel  W.  Baker,  The  Nile  Tributaries  of  Abyssinia,  pp.  88, 
128,  129,  135.     Hartford,  1868. 

44.  Journey  of  John  de  Carpini  and  William  de  Rubruquis  in  1253,  pp. 
8,  217.    Hakluyt  Society,  London,  1903. 

45.  James  Bryce,  Impressions  of  South  Africa,  pp.   107,  421.     New 
York,  1897. 

46.  Wilhelm    Roscher,    National-Oekonomik    des    Ackerbaues,    p.    44. 
Stuttgart,  1888. 

47.  A  full  discussion  in  Malthus,  Principles  of  Population,  Book  I, 
chap.  7. 

48.  J.  L.  Burckhardt,  Notes  on  the  Bedouins  and  Wahabys,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
133-144,  157-160.     London,  1831.     S.  M.  Zwemer,  Arabia,  The  Cradle  of 
Islam,  155-157.     New  York,  1900. 

49.  Vambery,  Seise  in  Mittelasien,  pp.  285,  289-297.     Leipzig,  1873. 

50.  Alexis  Krausse,  Russia  in  Asia,  pp.  127-129.     New  York,  1899. 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  517 

51.  Eatzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  174-175.    London,  1896- 
1898. 

52.  Wallace,  Eussia,  pp.  340-342.     New  York,  1904. 

53.  L.  March  Phillipps,  In  the  Desert,  pp.  17,  63-66.     London,  1905. 

54.  Felix  Dubois,  Timbuctoo,  pp.  256,  324-325.     Translated  from  the 
French,  New  York,  1896. 

55.  Heinrich  Barth,  Travels  in  North  and  Central  Africa,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
287-288,  293,  305.     New  York,  1857. 

56.  Felix    Dubois,    Timbuctoo,    pp.    133-134,    203,    206-207,    229,    232, 
239-245.     New  York,  1896. 

57.  Boyd  Alexander,  From  the  Niger  to  the  Nile,  Vol.  II,  pp.  1-2,  6, 
16-18,  80.     London,  1907. 

58.  Gibbon,   Decline  and   Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  Vol.  V,  p.   87; 
New  York,  1858. 

59.  Pliny,  Historia  Naturalis,  V,  3. 

60.  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  Vol.  II,  p.  495. 
New  York,  1858. 

61.  Ellsworth  Huntington,  The  Pulse  of  Asia,  p.  340.     Boston,  1907. 

62.  Pallas,  Travels  in  the  Southern  Provinces  of  Russia  in  1793-1794, 
Vol.  II,  p.  4.     London,  1812. 

63.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  94,  256. 

64.  Genesis,  XIII,  7-8;  XXI,  25-30;  XXVI,  15-22. 

65.  Herbert   Spencer,   Principles   of   Sociology,   Vol.   I,  p.   545.     New 
York,  1887. 

66.  Thucydides,  Book  II,  96. 

67.  Herodotus,  IV,  46. 

68.  Meredith  Townsend,  Asia  and  Europe,  Chapter  on  Arab  Courage. 
New  York,  1904. 

69.  Wilhelm    Roscher,    National-Oekonomik    des    Aclcerbaues,    p.    44. 
Stuttgart,   1888. 

70.  J.  L.  Burckhardt,  Notes  on  the  Bedouins  and  Wahabys,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
35-36.    London,  1831. 

71.  John  de  Piano  Carpini,  Journey  to  the  Northeast,  pp.  114-117,  120- 
125.     Hakluyt  Society,  London,  1904. 

72.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  28.     London,  1896-1898. 

73.  J.   H.  Speke,  Discovery  of  the  Source  of  the  Nile,  pp.   241-244. 
New  York,  1868. 

74.  Journey  of  William  de  Rubruquis,  pp.   18-27.     Hakluyt  Society, 
London,  1900. 

75.  Jerome  Dowd,  The  Negro  Races,  Vol.  I,  pp.  225-232.     New  York, 
1907. 

76.  Sir  Francis  Younghusband,  The  Heart  of  a  Continent,  pp.  85-98. 
London,   1904. 

77.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  170.     London,  1896  1898. 

78.  Heinrich  Barth,  Travels  in  North  and  Central  Africa,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
148,  152,  204,  210,  303.     New  York,  1857. 

79.  J.  L.  Burckhardt,  Notes  on  the  Bedouins  and  Wahabys,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
115-119,  284-286,  296-300.     London,  1831. 

80.  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  Vol.  V,  pp.  85-87. 
New  York,  1857. 

81.  Jerome  Dowd,  The  Negro  Races,  Vol.  I,  pp.  234-235.     New  York, 
1907. 


518  PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

82.  Vnmbery,  Keise  in  Mittel  Asien,  pp.  288-290.     Leipzig,  1873. 

83.  James  Bryce,  Impressions  of  South  Africa,  pp.  108,  128,  129,  155, 
199,  452-453.    New  York,  1897. 

84.  For   vivid    description    of    desert    defensive    warfare,    see   Gustav 
Frensen,  Peter  Moore's  Journey  to  Southwest  Africa.     Translated  from 
the  German,  1908.     Based  upon  interviews  with  hundreds  of  returning 
German  soldiers  from  the  Damara  campaign. 

85.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  454.     New  York,  1902. 

86.  Henry  Norman,  All  the  Russias,  p.  273.     New  York,  1902. 

87.  L.  March  Phillipps,  In  the  Desert,  pp.  54-56.     London,  1905. 

88.  Ibid.,  pp.  161-164. 

89.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  177.     London,  1896-1898. 

90.  Anatole  Leroy-Beaulieu,  The  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  Vol.  I,  pp.  29  30. 
New  York,  1893. 

91.  Pallas,  Travels  through  the  Southern  Provinces  of  Russia,  Vol.  I, 
pp.  532-533.     London,  1812. 

92.  Sir  S.  W.  Baker,  Nile  Tributaries  of  Abyssinia,  p.  88.     Hartford, 
1868. 

93.  David  Livingstone,  Mssionary  Travels,  pp.  53-56,  169.     New  York, 
1858. 

94.  Sven   Hedin,  Central  Asia  and  Tibet,  Vol.   I,  pp.  96,   136,  359. 
New  York  and  London,  1903.     Ellsworth  Huntington,  The  Pulse  of  Asia, 
pp.  193,  202,  212,  213.     Boston,  1907. 

95.  Sir  Francis  Younghusband,  The  Heart  of  a  Continent,  pp.  103,  104, 
107,  112-116,  120,  125-128,  137,  138,  143.     London,  1904. 

96.  S.  W.  Zwemer,  Arabia  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  pp.  147,  151.     New 
York,  1900.    D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer  East,  pp.  185,  195,  265.    London, 
1902. 

97.  Nachtigal,  Sahara  und  Sudan,  Vol.  I,  pp.  214-218,  267-269.     Ber- 
lin, 1879. 

98.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  168.     London,  1896-1898. 

99.  H.  B.  Mill,  International  Geography,  pp.  906,  914.     New  York, 
1902. 

100.  H.  Earth,  Travels  in  North  and  Central  Africa,  Vol.  I,  pp.  152, 
207,  210,  211.     New  York,  1857. 

101.  Ibid.,  41-44,  52,  61-64,  67,  76,  93,  95,  99,  103,  105. 

102.  L.  March   Phillipps,   In  the  Desert,  p.   174.     London,   1905. 

103.  Sir  Thomas  Holdich,  India,  pp.  91-93.     London,  1905. 

104.  M.  A.  Stein,  The  Sand-Buried  Ruins  of  Khotan,  pp.  275-324,  354 
408.    London,  1903. 

105.  H.  Earth,  Travels  in  North  and  Central  Africa,  Vol.  I,  chaj>.  III. 
New  York,  1857. 

106.  Ellsworth  Huntington,  The  Pulse  of  Asia,  pp.  160-190,  209,  304, 
309-310,  315,  367.     Boston,  1907. 

107.  J.  L.  Burckhardt,  Notes  on  the  Bedouins  and  Wahabys,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
57-64,  238-242.     London,  1831. 

108.  E.  Huntington,  The  Pulse  of  Asia,  pp.  137-138.    Boston,  1907. 

109.  John  de  Piano  Carpini,  Journey  to  the  Northeast,  pp.  109-111,  120. 
Hakluyt  Society,  London,  1904.     Journey  of  William  de  Rubruquis,  pp. 
191-193,  203,  224.     Hakluyt  Society,  London,  1903. 

110.  W.  W.  Rockhill,  The  Land  of  the  Lamas,  p.  80.    New  York,  1891. 

111.  Vambery,  Eeise  in  Mittel  Asien,  p.  295.    Leipzig,  1873. 


PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS  519 

112.  Nachtigal,  Sahara  und  Sudan,  Vol.  I,  pp.  257,  268.     Berlin,  1879. 

113.  E.  Huntington,  The  Pulse  of  Asia,  p.  74.     Boston,  1907. 

114.  L.  March  Phillipps,  In  the  Desert,  pp.  198-201.    London,  1905. 

115.  D.  Livingstone,  Travels  and  Eesearches  in  South  Africa,  p.  55. 
New  York,  1859. 

116.  W.  Eoscher,  Grundlagen  der  Nationalokonomik,  Book  VI,  chap.  II, 
p.  244.     Stuttgart,  1886. 

117.  Eatzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  170.     London,  1896-98. 

118.  W.  W.  Eockhill,  Land  of  the  Lamas,  p.  80.     New  York,  1891. 

119.  J.  L.  Burckhardt,  Notes  on  the  Bedouins  and  Wahabys,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
106,  187.    London,  1831.     S.  M.  Zwemer,  Arabia  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  pp. 
162,  268.     New  York,  1900. 

120.  Westermarck,  History  of  Human  Marriage,  p.  429,  notes  2  and  5, 
p.  440,  note  2,  p.  507.     London,  1891. 

121.  J.  L.  Burckhardt,  Notes  on  the  Bedouins  and  Wahabys,  Vol.  I, 
pp.  47,  48,  70,  71,  191-192,  239.     London,  1831. 

122.  S.  M.  Zwemer,  Arabia  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  p.  128.     New  York, 
1900. 

123.  Ezekiel,  Chap.  XXVII,  21. 

124.  For  economic  principle,  see  W.  Eoscher,  Handel  und  Gewerbefleiss, 
pp.  141-147.  Stuttgart,  1899. 

125.  Genesis,  Chap.  XXXVII,  25-28,  36. 

126.  W.  Eoscher,  National-Oekonomik  des  Ackerbaues,  p.  39,  Note  11. 
Stuttgart,  1888. 

127.  S.  P.  Scott,  History  of  the  Moorish  Empire  in  Europe,  Vol.  Ill,  p. 
616.     Philadelphia,  1904. 

128.  Felix  Dubois,  Timbuctoo,  pp.  251-252.     New  York,  1896. 

129.  Ibid.,  pp.  257-264. 

130.  S.  M.  Zwemer,  Arabia  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  p.  151.     New  York, 
1900. 

131.  George  Adam  Smith,  Historical  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,  pp. 
182-184.     New  York,  1897. 

132.  J.  L.  Burckhardt,  Notes  on  the  Bedouins  and  Wahabys,  Vol.  I,  p. 
65.     London,  1831. 

133.  L.  March  Phillipps,  In  the  Desert,  pp.  130-134.     London,  1903. 

134.  F.  E.  Martin,  A  History  of  Oriental  Carpets  before  1800,  pp.  9, 
29,   69   et  seq.,   101,   121.      Vienna,    1908.     G.   LeStrange,   Land   of   the 
Eastern  Caliphates,  pp.  37,  293-294,  353,  363,  471.    Cambridge,  1905. 

135.  J.  K.  Mumford,  Oriental  Bugs,  pp.  23-40,  100-111.     New  York, 
1895. 

136.  D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer  East,  pp.  197-198.     London,  1902. 

137.  J.  K.  Mumford,  Oriental  Eugs,  p.  61.     New  York,  1895. 

138.  J.  Ferguson,  History  of  Architecture,  Vol.  II,  pp.  277-278,  499, 
500.     New  York.     J.  Ferguson,  History  of  Indian  and  Eastern  Archi- 
tecture, Vol.  11,  pp.  210-214.     New  York,  1891. 

139.  Wilhelm  Bode,  Vorderasiatische  Kniipfteppiche,  pp.  3-4.     Leipzig. 

140.  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Eoman  Empire,  Vol.  V,  p.  78. 
New  York,  1858. 

141.  Sir  S.  W.  Baker,  Exploration  of  the  Nile  Tributaries  of  Abyssinia, 
pp.  148-152.     Hartford,  1868. 

142.  Strabo,  Book  VII,  chap.  Ill,  7,  17 ;  chap.  IV,  6.  Book  XI,  chap. 
II,  1,  2,  3. 


520  PLAINS,  STEPPES  AND  DESERTS 

143.  J.  Wappaus,  Handbuch  der  Geographic  und  Statistik  des  ehem- 
aligen  spanischen  Mittel-  und  Sud-Amerika,  p.  1019.    Leipzig,  1863-1870. 

144.  Sir   F.    Younghusband,   The   Heart   of   a  Continent,   pp.    72,   74. 
London,  1904.     Alfred  Kirchoff,  Man  and  Earth,  pp.  58-71.     London. 

145.  J.  L.  Burckhardt,  Notes  on  the  Bedouins  and  Wahabys,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
374-377.     London,  1831.     L.  March  Phillipps,  In  the  Desert,  pp.  98-100. 
London,  1905. 

146.  Exodus,  Chap.  XXII,  1-4,  23. 

147.  John  de  Piano  Carpini,  Journey  to  the  Northeast  in  1246,  pp.  110, 
111,  113.     Hakluyt  Society,  London,  1904. 

148.  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  Vol.  V,  p.  89. 
New  York,  1858.     H.  Barth,  Travels  in  North  and  Central  Africa,  Vol. 
I,  p.  144.     New  York,  1857. 

149.  E.  Huntington,  The  Pulse  of  Asia,  pp.  121-123.     Boston,  1907. 

150.  James  Bryce,  Impressions  of  South  Africa,  p.  422.     New  York, 
1897. 

151.  Deuteronomj,  VII,  1-3. 

152.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  184.     London,  1896-1898. 

153.  Boyd  Alexander,  From  the  Niger  to  the  Nile,  Vol.  I,  pp.  190-197. 
London,  1907. 

154.  H.  Barth,  Travels  in  North  and  Central  Africa,  Vol.  I,  pp.  202, 
277-281.    New  York,  1857. 

155.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  173.     London,  1896-1898. 

156.  Ibid.,  Vol.  Ill,  Chapter  on  Islam,  pp.  195-204. 

157.  George  Adam  Smith,  Historical  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,  pp. 
28-30.     New  York,  1897.     L.  March  Phillipps,  In  the  Desert,  pp.  101- 
105.     London,  1905. 

158.  E.   A.   Freeman,   Historical  Geography   of   Europe,   pp.    114-116. 
London,  1882. 

159.  George  Adam   Smith,   Historical   Geography  of   the  Holy   Land, 
pp.  88-90.     New  York,  1897. 

160.  Jeremiah,  Chap.   XXXV,  6-14. 


CHAPTER  XV 
MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  THEIR  PASSES 

THE    important    characteristic    of    plains    is    their   power  Man  ** 

to   facilitate  every   phase   of  historical   movement  ;   that   of  Par^ 

.    .        .      .,    r  ..    the  mobile 

mountains   is    their   power   to    retard,   arrest,    or   deflect   1^-- 


Man,  as  part  of  the  mobile  envelope  of  the  earth,  like  air  and  Of  the 
water  feels  always  the  pull  of  gravity.  From  this  he  can  earth. 
never  fully  emancipate  himself.  By  an  output  of  energy  he 
may  climb  the  steepest  slope,  but  with  every  upward  step  the 
ascent  becomes  more  difficult,  owing  to  the  diminution  of 
warmth  and  air  and  the  increasing  tax  upon  the  heart.1 
Maintenance  of  life  in  high  altitudes  is  always  a  struggle. 
The  decrease  of  food  resources  from  lower  to  higher  levels 
makes  the  passage  of  a  mountain  system  an  ordeal  for  every 
migrating  people  or  marching  army  that  has  to  live  off  the 
country  which  it  traverses.  Mountains  therefore  repel  popu- 
lation by  their  inaccessibility  and  also  by  their  harsh  condi- 
tions of  life,  while  the  lowlands  attract  it,  both  in  migration 
and  settlement.  Historical  movement,  when  forced  into  the 
upheaved  areas  of  the  earth,  avoids  the  ridges  and  peaks, 
seeks  the  valleys  and  passes,  where  communication  with  the 
lowlands  is  easiest. 

High  massive  mountain  systems  present  the  most  effective  Inaccessi- 
barriers  which  man  meets  on  the  land  surface  of  the  earth,  bility  of 
To  the  spread  of  population  they  offer  a  resistance  which  mountaina' 
long  serves   to   exclude  settlers.      The  difficulty   of  making 
roads  up  steep,  rocky  slopes  and  through  the  forests  usually 
covering  their  rain-drenched  sides,  is  deterrent  enough;  but 
in  addition  to  this,  general  infertility,  paucity  of  arable  land, 
harsh  climatic  conditions,  and  the  practical  lack  of  communi- 
cation with  the  outside  world  offer  scant  basis  for  subsistence. 
Hence,  as  a  rule,  only  when  pressure  of  population  in  the  low- 
lands becomes  too  great  under  prevailing  economic  methods, 
do  clearings  and  cabins  begin  to  creep  up  the  slopes.     Moun- 


522       MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 

tains  are  always  regions  of  late  occupation.  Even  in  the 
Stone  Age,  we  find  the  long-headed  race  of  Mediterranean 
stock,  who  originally  populated  Europe,  distributed  over 
the  continent  close  up  to  the  foot  of  the  high  Alps,  but  not 
in  the  mountains  themselves,  and  only  scantily  represented  in 
the  Auvergne  Plateau  of  France.  The  inhospitable  highlands 
of  Switzerland,  the  German  Alps,  and  the  Auvergne  received 
their  first  population  later  when  the  Alpine  race  began  to 
occupy  western  Europe.2  The  Mittelgebirge  of  Germany 
were  not  settled  till  the  Middle  Ages.  In  the  United  States, 
the  flood  of  population  had  spread  westward  by  1810  to  the 
ninety-fifth  meridian  and  the  north-south  course  of  the 
Missouri  River ;  but  out  of  this  sea  of  settlement  the  Adiron- 
dack Mountains,  a  few  scattered  spots  in  the  Appalachians, 
and  the  Ozark  Highlands  rose  as  so  many  islands  of  unin- 
habited wilderness,  and  they  remain  to-day  areas  of  sparser 
population.  In  1800,  the  "bare  spots"  in  the  eastern  moun- 
tains were  more  pronounced.  [See  map  page  156- ]  Great 
stretches  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  of  the  Laurentian  High- 
lands of  Canada,  like  smaller  patches  in  the  Scandinavian  and 
Swiss  Alps,  are  practically  uninhabited. 

Mountains  Mountain  regions,  like  deserts  and  seas,  become  mere  transit 

districts,  which  man  traverses  as  quickly  as  possible.  Hence 
they  often  lie  as  great  inert  areas  in  the  midst  of  active 
historical  lands,  and  first  appear  upon  the  historical  stage 
in  minor  roles,  when  they  are  wanted  by  the  plains  people  as 
a  passway  to  desirable  regions  beyond.  Then,  as  a  rule, 
only  their  transit  routes  are  secured,  while  the  less  accessible 
regions  are  ignored.  Cassar  makes  no  mention  of  the  Alps, 
except  to  state  that  he  has  crossed  them,  until  some  of  the 
mountain  tribes  try  to  block  the  passage  of  Roman  merchants 
or  armies ;  then  they  become  important  enough  to  be  con- 
quered. It  was  not  till  after  the  Cimbri  in  102  B.  C.  invaded 
Italy  by  the  Brenner  route,  that  the  Romans  realized  the 
value  of  Rhaetia  (Tyrol)  as  a  thoroughfare  from  Italy  to 
Germany,  and  began  its  conquest  in  36  B.  C.  This  was  the 
same  value  which  the  Tyrol  so  long  had  for  the  old  German 
Empire  and  later  for  Austria, — merely  to  secure  connection 
with  the  Po  Valley.  The  need  of  land  communication  with  the 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        523 

Rhone  Valley  led  the  Romans  to  attack  the  Salyes,  who  in- 
habited the  Maritime  Alps,  and  after  eighty  years  of  war  to 
force  from  them  the  concession  of  a  narrow  transit  strip, 
twelve  stadia  or  one  and  a  half  miles  wide,  for  the  purpose  of 
making  a  road  to  Massilia.3  The  necessity  of  controlling 
such  transit  lands  has  drawn  British  India  into  the  occupa- 
tion of  mountain  Baluchistan,  Kashmir  and  Sikkim,  just 
as  it  has  caused  the  highlands  of  Afghanistan  to  figure  ac- 
tively in  the  expansion  policy  of  both  India  and  Russia. 
The  conquest  of  such  transit  lands  has  always  been  attended 
by  road  building,  from  the  construction  of  the  Roman  high- 
way through  the  Brenner  Pass  to  the  modern  Russian  mili- 
tary road  through  the  Pass  of  Dariel  across  the  Caucasus, 
and  the  yet  more  recent  Indian  railroad  to  Darjeeling,  with 
the  highway  extension  beyond  to  the  Tibetan  frontier 
through  Himalayan  Sikkim. 

Such  mountain  regions  attain  independent  historical  im- 
portance when  their  population  increases  enough  to  form  the 
nucleus  of  a  state,  and  to  acquire  additional  territory  about  the 
highland  base  either  by  conquest  or  voluntary  union,  while 
they  utilize  their  naturally  protected  location  and  their 
power  to  grant  safe  transit  to  their  allies,  as  means  to  se- 
cure their  political  autonomy.  Therefore  to  mountain 
regions  so  often  falls  the  role  of  buffer  states.  Such  were 
medieval  Burgundy  and  modern  Savoy,  which  occupied 
part  of  the  same  territory,  Navarre  which  in  the  late  Middle 
Ages  controlled  the  important  passway  around  the  western 
end  of  the  Pyrenees,  and  Switzerland  which  commands  the 
passes  of  the  central  Alps.  The  position  of  such  mountain 
states  is,  however,  always  fraught  with  danger,  owing  to 
the  weakness  inherent  in  their  small  area  and  yet  smaller 
allowance  of  productive  soil,  to  their  diverse  ethnic  elements, 
and  the  forces  working  against  political  consolidation  in  their 
deeply  dissected  surface.  Political  solidarity  has  a  hard,  Transition 
slow  birth  in  the  mountains.  forms  of 

In     view     of     the     barrier     character     of     mountains,     a  relief  be~ 

t\vfifin 
fact  of  immense  importance  to  the  distribution  of  man  and  highlands 

his  activities  is  the  rarity  of  abrupt,  ungraded  forms  of  relief  and  low- 
on  the  earth's  surface.     The  physiographic  cause  lies  in  the  lands. 


524        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 


Importance 
of  transi- 
tion 
slopes. 


elasticity  of  the  earth's  crust  and  the  leveling  effect  of 
weathering  and  denudation.  Everywhere  mountains  are 
worn  down  and  rounded  off,  while  valleys  broaden  and  fill 
up  to  shallow  trough  outlines.  Transition  forms  of  relief 
abound.  Human  intercourse  meets  therefore  few  absolute 
barriers  on  the  land;  but  these  few  reveal  the  obstacles  to 
historical  movement  in  perpendicular  reliefs.  The  mile-high 
walls  of  the  Grand  Canon  of  the  Colorado  are  an  insuperable 
obstacle  to  intercourse  for  a  stretch  of  three  hundred  miles. 
The  glacier-crowned  ridge  of  the  Bernese  Alps  is  crossed 
by  no  wagon  road  between  the  Grimsel  Pass  and  the  upper 
Rhone  highway  around  their  western  end,  a  distance  of  100 
kilometers  (62  miles).  The  Pennine  Alps  have  no  pass  be- 
tween the  Great  St.  Bernard  and  the  Simplon,  a  distance  of 
90  kilometers  (54  miles). 

Gentle  transition  slopes  or  terrace  lands  facilitate  almost 
everywhere  access  to  the  lowest,  most  habitable  and  therefore, 
from  the  human  standpoint,  most  important  section  of  moun- 
tains. They  combine  the  ease  of  intercourse  characteristic 
of  plains  with  many  advantages  of  the  mountains,  and 
especially  in  warm  climates  they  unite  in  a  narrow  zone  both 
tropical  and  temperate  vegetation.  The  human  value  of 
these  transition  slopes  holds  equally  of  single  hills,  massive 
mountain  systems,  and  continental  reliefs.  The  earth  as  a 
whole  owes  much  of  its  habitability  to  these  gently  graded 
slopes.  Continents  and  countries  in  which  they  are  meagerly 
developed  suffer  from  difficulty  of  intercourse,  retarded  de- 
velopment and  poverty  of  the  choicest  habitable  areas.  This 
is  one  disadvantage  of  South  Africa,  emphasized  farther  by 
a  poor  coastline.  The  Pacific  face  of  Australia  would  gain 
vastly  in  historical  importance,  if  the  drop  from  the  high- 
lands to  the  ocean  were  stretched  out  into  a  broad  slope, 
like  that  which  links  our  Atlantic  coastal  plain  with  the 
Appalachian  highlands.  There  each  river  valley  shows  three 
characteristic  anthropo-geographical  sub-divisions — the  active 
seaports  and  tide-water  tillage  of  its  lower  course,  the  con- 
trasted agriculture  of  its  hilly  course,  the  upland  farms, 
waterpower  industries  and  mines  of  its  headstream  valleys, 
each  landscape  giving  its  population  distinctive  characteristics. 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        525 

The  same  natural  features,  with  the  same  effect  upon  human 
activities  and  population,  appear  in  the  long  seaward  slopes 
of  France,  Germany  and  northern  Italy. 

At  the  base  of  the  mountains  themselves,  where  the  bold  Piedmont 
relief  begins,  is  always  a  piedmont  zone  of  hilly  surface  belts  as 
but  gentler  grade,  at  whose  inner  or  upland  edge  every  ndary 
phase  of  the  historical  movement  receives  a  marked  check. 
Here  is  a  typical  geographical  boundary,  physical  and  human. 
It  shifts  slightly  in  different  periods,  according  to  the  growing 
density  of  population  in  the  plains  below  and  improved 
technique  in  industry  and  road-making.  It  is  often  both  an 
ethnic  and  cultural  boundary,  because  at  the  rim  of  the 
mountains  the  geologic  and  economic  character  of  the  country 
changes.4  The  expanding  peoples  of  the  plains  spread  over 
the  piedmont  so  far  as  it  offers  familiar  and  comparatively 
favorable  geographic  conditions,  scatter  their  settlements 
along  the  base  of  the  mountains,  and  here  fix  their  political 
frontier  for  a  time,  though  later  they  may  advance  it  to  the 
crest  of  the  ridge,  in  order  to  secure  a  more  scientific 
boundary.  The  civilized  population  of  the  broad  Indus  Val- 
ley spread  westward  up  the  western  highlands,  only  so  far 
as  the  shelving  slopes  of  the  clay  and  conglomerate  foothills, 
which  constitute  the  piedmont  of  the  Suleiman  and  Kirthar 
Mountains,  afforded  conditions  for  their  crops.  Thus  from 
the  Arabian  Sea  for  600  miles  north  to  the  Gomal  River,  the 
political  frontier  of  India  was  defined  by  the  line  of  relief 
dividing  the  limestone  mountains  from  the  alluvial  plain,  the 
marauding  Baluch  and  Afghan  hill  tribes  from  the  patient 
farmers  of  the  Sind.5  This  line  remained  the  border  of  India 
from  pre-British  days  till  the  recent  annexation  of  Baluchis- 
tan. 

These  piedmont  boundaries  are  most  clearly  defined  in 
point  of  race  and  civilization,  where  superior  peoples  from 
the  lowlands  are  found  expanding  at  the  cost  of  retarded 
mountain  folk.  Romans  and  Rhaetians  once  met  along  a 
line  skirting  the  foot  of  the  eastern  Alps,  as  Russians  to-day 
along  the  base  of  the  Caucasus  adjoin  the  territories  of  the 
heterogeneous  tribes  occupying  that  mountain  area.8  [See 
map  page  225.]  The  plains-loving  Magyars  of  Hungary  have 


526        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 


Density 
of  popula- 
tion in 
piedmont 
belts. 


pushed  up  to  the  rim  of  mountainous  Siebenburgen  or  Tran- 
sylvania from  Arad  on  the  Maros  River  to  Sziget  on  the  upper 
Theiss,  while  the  highland  region  has  a  predominant  Rouman- 
ian population.  A  clearly  defined  linguistic  and  cultural 
boundary  of  Indo-Aryan  speech  and  religion,  both  Hindu  and 
Mohammedan,  follows  the  piedmont  edges  of  the  Brahmaputra 
Valley,  and  separates  the  lowland  inhabitants  from  the 
pagans  of  Tibeto-Burman  speech  occupying  the  Himalayan 
slope  to  the  north  and  the  Khasia  Mountains  to  the  south. 
The  highland  race  is  Mongoloid,  while  the  Bengali  of  an 
Aryan,  Dravidian  and  Mongoloid  blend  fill  the  river  plain.7 
Such  piedmont  boundary  lines  tend  to  blur  into  bands  or  zones 
of  ethnic  intermixture  and  cultural  assimilation.  The  western 
Himalayan  foothills  show  the  blend  of  Mongoloid  and  Aryan 
stocks,  where  the  vigorous  Rajputs  of  the  plains  have  en- 
croached upon  the  mountaineer's  land.8  Of  almost  every 
mountain  folk  it  can  be  assumed  that  they  once  occupied  their 
highlands  to  the  outermost  rim  of  the  piedmont,  and  retired 
to  the  inner  rim  of  this  intermediary  slope  only  under  com- 
pulsion from  without. 

The  piedmont  boundary  also  divides  two  areas  of  con- 
trasted density  of  population.  Mountain  regions  are,  as  a 
rule,  more  sparsely  settled  than  plains.  The  piedmont  is 
normally  a  transition  region  in  this  respect;  but  where  high 
mountains  rise  as  climatic  islands  of  adequate  water  supply 
out  of  desert  and  steppes,  they  concentrate  on  their  lower 
slopes  all  the  sedentary  population,  making  their  piedmonts 
zones  of  greatest  density.  Low  mountains  in  arid  regions 
become  centers  of  population ;  here  their  barrier  nature 
vanishes.  In  the  Sudanese  state  of  Darfur,  the  Marra  Moun- 
tains are  the  district  best  watered  and  most  thickly  popu- 
lated. Nowhere  higher  than  6000  feet  (1850  meters),  they 
afford  running  water  at  4000  feet  elevation  and  water  pools 
in  the  sandy  beds  of  their  wadis  at  3200  feet.  Below  this, 
water  disappears  from  the  surface,  and  can  be  found  only  in 
wells  whose  depth  and  scarcity  increase  with  distance  from 
the  central  mountains.9  The  neighboring  kingdom  of  Wadai 
shows  similar  conditions  and  effects.10  In  the  heart  of  Aus- 
tralia, where  utter  desert  reigns,  the  Macuonnell  Ranges 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        527 

form  the  nucleus  of  the  northern  area  occupied  by  the  Arunta 
tribe  of  natives ;  farther  north  the  Murchison  Range,  usually 
abounding  in  water-holes,  is  the  center  and  stronghold  of 
the  Warramunga  tribe.11 

Mineral  wealth  or  waterpower  in  the  mountains  serves  to 
collect  an  urban  and  industrial  population  along  their  rim, 
as  we  see  it  about  the  base  of  the  Erz  Mountains  in  Saxony, 
the  Riesen  range  in  Silesia,  the  coal-bearing  Pennine  Moun- 
tains of  northwestern  England,  and  the  highlands  of  southern 
Wales,  all  which  piedmont  zones  show  a  density  of  over  150 
to  the  square  kilometer  (385  to  the  square  mile).  Hence 
the  original  Swiss  Confederation,  which  included  only  the 
mountain  cantons  of  Schwyz,  Uri  and  Unterwalden,  was 
greatly  'trengthened  by  the  accession  of  the  piedmont  can- 
tons of  Lucerne,  Zurich,  Zug  and  Bern  in  the  early  fourteenth 
century,  as  later  by  St.  Gall,  Aargau  and  Geneva.  These 
marginal  cantons  to-day  show  a  density  of  population  ex- 
ceeding 385  to  the  square  mile,  and  rising  to  1356  in  the 
^canton  of  Geneva. 

Piedmont  belts  tend  strongly  towards  urban  development,  Piedmont 
even  where  rural  settlement  is  sparse.  Sparsity  of  popula-  towns  and 
tion  and  paucity  of  towns  within  the  mountains  cause  main  rc 
lines  of  traffic  to  keep  outside  the  highlands,  but  close  enough 
to  their  base  to  tap  their  trade  at  every  valley  outlet.  On  the 
alluvial  fans  or  plains  of  these  valley  outlets,  where  mountain 
and  piedmont  road  intersect,  towns  grow  up.  Some  of  them 
develop  into  cities,  when  they  command  transverse  routes  of 
communication  quite  across  the  highlands.  The  ancient  Via 
Aemilia  traced  the  northern  base  of  the  Apennines  from 
Ariminum  on  the  Adriatic  to  Dertona  at  the  foot  of  the 
Ligurian  range  back  of  Genoa,  and  connected  a  long  line  of 
Roman  colonies.  The  modern  railroad  follows  almost  exactly 
the  course  of  the  old  Roman  road,12  while  a  transverse  line 
southward  across  the  Apennines,  following  an  ancient  high- 
way over  the  Poretta  Pass  to  the  Arno  Valley,  has  main- 
tained the  old  preeminence  of  Bologna.  A  line  of  towns, 
connected  by  highways  or  railroads,  according  to  the  econo- 
mic development  of  the  section,  defines  the  bases  of  the 
Pyrenees,  Alps,  Jura,  Apennines,  Harz,  Vosges,  Elburz  and 


528        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 


Piedmont 
termini 
of  trans- 
montane 
routes. 


numerous  other  ranges.  Along  the  Elburz  piedmont  runs 
the  imperial  road  of  Persia  from  Tabriz  through  Teheran  to 
Meshed.  In  arid  regions  these  piedmont  roads  are  an  un- 
failing feature,  but  their  towns  shrink  to  rural  settlements, 
except  at  the  junction  of  transmontane  routes. 

Piedmont  cities  draw  their  support  from  plain,  mountain 
and  transmontane  region,  relying  chiefly  on  the  fertile  soil 
of  the  level  country  to  feed  their  large  populations.  Some- 
times they  hug  the  foot  of  the  mountains,  as  Bologna,  Verona, 
Bergamo,  Zurich,  Denver  and  Pittsburg  do;  sometimes,  like 
Milan,  Turin,  and  Munich,  they  drop  down  into  the  plain, 
but  keep  the  mountains  in  sight.  They  flourish  in  propor- 
tion to  their  local  resources,  in  which  mineral  wealth  is 
particularly  important,  and  to  the  number  and  practicability 
of  their  transmontane  connections.  Hence  they  often  receive 
their  stamp  from  the  mountains  behind  them  as  well  as  from 
the  bordering  plain.  The  St.  Gotthard  route  is  flanked  by 
Lucerne  on  the  north  and  Milan  on  the  south.  The  Brenner 
has  its  urban  outlets  at  Munich  and  Verona.  Narbonne 
and  Barcelona  form  the  termini  of  the  route  over  the  eastern 
Pyrenees;  Toulouse  commands  the  less  used  central  passes, 
and  Bayonne  the  western.  Tiflis  is  situated  in  the  great 
mountain  trough  connecting  the  Black  Sea  and  the  Caspian ; 
but  over  the  Caucasus  by  the  Pass  of  Dariel  come  the  in- 
fluences which  make  it  a  Russian  town.  Peshawar,  situated 
in  the  mountain  angle  of  the  Punjab,  depends  more  upon  the 
Khaibar  Pass  and  its  connections  thereby  with  Central  Asia 
than  upon  the  plains  of  the  Indus ;  its  population,  in 
appearance  and  composition  nearly  as  much  Central  Asiatic 
as  Indian,  is  engaged  in  traffic  between  the  Punjab  and  the 
whole  trans-Hindu  Kush  country.13 

Where  a  mountain  system  describes  a  semi-circular  course, 
its  transit  routes  tend  to  converge  on  the  inner  side,  and  at 
their  foci  fix  the  sites  of  busy  commercial  centers.  Turin 
draws  on  a  long  series  of  Alpine  and  Apennine  routes  from 
the  Pass  of  Giovi  (1548  feet  or  472  meters)  leading  up  from 
Genoa  on  the  south,  to  the  Great  St.  Bernard  on  the  north. 
Milan  gets  immense  support  from  the  St.  Gotthard  and 
Simplon  railroads  over  the  Alps,  besides  wagon  routes  over 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        529 

several  minor  passes.  Kulm,  Balkh  and  Kunduz  in  the  pied- 
mont of  northern  Afghanistan  are  fed  by  twenty  or  more 
passes  over  the  Hindu  Kush  and  Pamir.  Bukhara  is  the  re- 
moter focus  of  all  these  routes,  and  also  of  the  valley  high- 
ways of  the  western  Tian  Shan.  It  therefore  occupies  a 
location  which  would  make  it  one  of  the  great  emporiums  of 
the  world,  were  it  not  for  the  expanse  of  desert  to  the  west 
and  the  scantiness  of  its  local  water  supply,  which  is  tapped 
farther  upstream  for  the  irrigation  of  Samarkand.  In  its 
bazaars  are  found  drugs,  dyes  and  teas  from  India;  wool, 
skins  and  dried  fruit  from  Afghanistan ;  woven  goods,  arms, 
and  books  from  Persia ;  and  Russian  wares  imported  by  rail 
and  caravan.  English  goods,  which  formerly  came  in  by 
the  Kabul  route  from  India,  have  been  excluded  since  Russia 
established  a  protectorate  over  the  province  of  Bukhara. 
Across  the  highlands  to  the  east,  the  cities  of  Kashgar  and 
Yarkand,  situated  in  that  piedmont  zone  of  vegetation  where 
mountain  and  desert  meet,  are  enclosed  by  a  vast  amphi- 
theater formed  by  the  Tian  Shan,  the  Pamir  Highlands,  and 
the  Karakorum  range.  Stieler's  atlas  marks  no  less  than  six 
trade  routes  over  the  passes  of  these  mountains  from  Kashgar 
to  the  headstreams  of  the  Sir-daria  and  Oxus,  and  six  from 
Yarkand  to  the  Oxus  and  Indus.  Kashgar  is  a  meeting 
ground  of  many  nationalities.  To  its  bazaars  come  traders 
from  China,  India,  Afghanistan,  Bukhara,  and  Russian  Tur- 
kestan." The  Russian  railway  up  the  Sir-daria  to  Andizhan 
brings  European  goods  within  relatively  easy  reach  of  the 
Terek  Davan  Pass,  and  makes  serious  competition  for  Eng- 
lish wares  entering  by  the  more  difficult  Karakorum  Pass 
from  India.15 

Where  mountains  drop  off  into  a  desert,  as  these  Central  Cities  of 
Asiatic   ranges  do,  their  piedmont  cities   are  confined  to  a  cpast&l 
narrow  zone  between  mountains  and  arid  waste.     Bordering 
two  transit  regions  of  scant  population  and  through  travel, 
they  become  natural  outfitting  points,  centers  of  exchange 
rather  than  production.     Where  mountains  drop  off  into  the 
sea  and  the  piedmont  therefore  becomes  a  coastal  belt,  again 
it  borders  two  transit  regions ;  but  here  the  ports  of  the  desert 
are  replaced  by  maritime  ports,  which  command  the  world 


530        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 


Piedmonts 
as  colonial 
or  back- 
woods 
frontiers. 


thoroughfare  of  the  ocean.  They  therefore  tend  to  concentrate 
population  and  commerce  wherever  a  good  harbor  coincides 
with  the  outlet  of  a  transmontane  route,  as  in  Genoa  and  Bom- 
bay. 

Since  mountains  are  inhospitable  to  every  phase  of  the 
historical  movement,  they  long  remain  regions  of  retardation. 
Hence  to  their  bordering  plains  they  sustain  the  relation  of 
young  undeveloped  lands,  so  that  life  in  their  piedmont  belts 
tends  to  show  for  a  long  time  all  the  characteristics  of  a  new 
colonial  frontier.  The  rim  of  the  Southern  Appalachians 
abundantly  illustrates  this  principle  even  to-day.  During  the 
westward  expansion  of  the  American  people  from  1830  to 
1850,  the  eastern  rim  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  was  dotted  with 
trading  posts  like  that  of  the  Missouri  Fur  Company  at  the 
forks  of  the  Missouri  River,  Forts  Laramie  and  Platte  on  the 
North  Fork  of  the  Platte,  Vrain's  Fort  and  Fort  Lancaster  on 
the  South  Fork,  Bent's  Fort  at  the  mountain  exit  of  the 
Arkansas  River,  and  Barclay's  in  the  high  Mora  Valley  of  the 
upper  Canadian.  These  posts  gathered  in  the  rich  pelts 
which  formed  the  one  product  of  this  highland  area  suscept- 
ible of  bearing  the  cost  of  transportation  to  the  far  away 
Missouri  River.  Though  they  developed  into  way-stations 
on  the  overland  trails,  when  the  movement  of  population  to 
California  and  Oregon  in  the  forties  and  fifties  made  the 
Rocky  Mountains  a  typical  highland  transit  region,  yet  they 
long  remained  frontier  posts.16  Later  the  abundant  water 
supply  of  this  piedmont  district,  as  compared  with  the  arid 
plains  below,  and  the  mineral  wealth  of  the  mountains  con- 
centrated here  an  agricultural  and  industrial  population. 

In  Sze  Chuan  province  of  western  China,  the  piedmont  of 
a  vast  highland  hinterland  shows  a  similar  development. 
Here  the  towns  of  Matang,  Sungpan,  Kuan  Hsien,  and  even 
the  capital  Chengtu,  situated  in  the  high  Min  Valley  at  the 
foot  of  the  mountains  walling  them  in  on  the  west,  are  em- 
poriums for  trade  with  the  Tibetans,  who  bring  hither  furs, 
hides  and  wool  from  their  plateau  pastures,  and  musk  from 
the  musk  deer  on  the  Koko  Nor  plains.17  Just  to  the  north, 
Sian  (Singan),  capital  of  the  highland  province  of  Shensi, 
concentrates  the  fur  trade  of  a  large  mountain  wilderness  to 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        531 

the  west.  Several  blocks  on  the  main  street  form  a  great  fur 
market  for  the  sale  of  mink  and  other  skins  used  to  line  the 
official  robes  of  mandarins.18 

Like  seas,  deserts,  and  other  geographical  transit  regions,  Mo1^ 
mountains  too  under  primitive  conditions  develop  their  pro- 
fessional carriers.  These  collect  in  the  piedmont,  where 
highway  and  mule  train  cease,  and  where  the  steep  track 
admits  only  human  beasts  of  burden,  trained  by  their  environ- 
ment to  be  climbers  and  packers.  These  mountain  carriers 
are  found  on  the  Pacific  face  of  the  coast  ranges  of  North  and 
South  America  from  the  peninsula  of  Alaska  to  the  Straits 
of  Magellan.  They  are  able  to  pack  from  100  to  160 
pounds  up  a  steep  grade.  The  Chilkoot  Indians,  men, 
women  and  children,  did  invaluable  service  on  the  White 
Horse  and  Chilkoot  passes  during  the  early  days  of  the  Klon- 
dike rush.  They  had  devised  a  well-arranged  harness,  which 
enabled  them  better  to  carry  their  loads.  Farther  south  in 
British  Columbia  the  piedmont  tribes  had  once  a  like  impor- 
tance ;  there  they  operated  especially  from  the  town  of  Hope 
on  the  lower  Frazer  River  as  a  distributing  center.  The 
Mexican  carrier  is  so  efficient  and  so  cheap  that  he  enters 
into  serious  competition  with  modern  schemes  to  improve 
transportation,  especially  as  the  rugged  relief  of  this  country 
makes  those  schemes  expensive.19  The  Indians  of  the  eastern 
slope  of  the  Andes  pack  India  rubber,  in  loads  of  150  pounds 
each,  from  the  upper  Purus  and  Madeira  rivers  up  to  the 
Andean  plateau  at  a  height  of  15,000  feet,  and  there  transfer 
their  burdens  to  mules  for  transport  down  to  the  Peruvian 
port  of  Mollendo.20 

The  retarded  mountain  peoples  on  the  borders  of  the 
Central  Asia  plateau  employ  the  same  primitive  means  of 
transportation.  The  roads  leading  from  the  Sze  Chuan 
province  of  western  China  over  the  mountain  ranges  to  Tibet 
are  traversed  by  long  lines  of  porters,  men,  women  and 
children,  laden  with  bales  of  brick  tea,21  the  strongest  of  them 
shouldering  350  pounds.  The  Bhutia  coolies  of  Sikkim  act 
as  carriers  on  military  and  commercial  expeditions  on  the 
track  across  the  Himalayas  between  Darjeeling  and  Shigatze. 
Colonel  Younghusband  found  that  these  Bhutias,  who  were 


532        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 


Power  of 
mountain 
barriers  to 
block  or 
deflect. 


paid  by  the  job,  would  carry  a  pack  of  250  to  300  pounds, 
or  three  times  the  usual  burden  of  a  Central  Asia  carrier. 
Landon  cites  the  case  of  a  Bhutia  lady  who  was  said  to 
have  carried  a  piano  on  her  head  from  the  plains  up  to  Dar- 
jeeling  (7150  feet).22  In  Nepal,  women  and  girls,  less  often 
men,  have  long  been  accustomed  to  carry  travellers  and 
merchandise  over  the  Himalayan  ranges.23  In  the  marginal 
valleys  of  the  Himalayas,  like  Kashmir  and  Baltistan,  the 
natives  are  regularly  impressed  for  bcgar  or  carrier  service 
on  the  English  military  roads  to  strategic  points  on  the 
high  mountain  frontier  of  the  Indian  Empire.24  So  the 
Igorots  of  the  Luzon  province  of  Benguet  pack  all  goods 
and  supplies  from  Naguilian  in  the  lowlands  up  4000  feet 
in  a  distance  of  25  miles  to  their  little  capital  of  Bagnio; 
for  this  service  they  are  now  paid  one  peso  (46  cents  in  1901) 
a  day  with  food,  or  ten  times  as  much  as  under  the  Spanish 
rule.28 

If  the  historical  movement  slackens  its  pace  at  the  pied- 
mont slope,  higher  up  the  mountain  it  comes  to  a  halt.  Only 
when  human  invention  has  greatly  improved  communication 
across  the  barrier  are  its  obstacles  in  part  overcome.  The 
great  highland  wall  stretching  across  southern  Europe  from 
the  Bay  of  Biscay  to  the  Black  Sea  long  cut  off  the  solid 
mass  of  the  continent  from  the  culture  of  the  Mediterranean 
lands.  Owing  to  these  mountains  Central  Europe  came  late 
into  the  foreground  of  history,  not  till  the  Middle  Ages. 
Even  the  penetrating  civilization  of  Greece  reached  it  only 
by  long  detours  around  the  ends  of  the  mountain  barrier; 
by  Massilia  and  the  Rhone,  by  Istria  and  the  Danube,  Greek 
commerce  trickled  through  to  the  interior  of  the  continent. 

Where  mountains  fail  to  check,  they  deflect  the  historical 
movement.  The  wall  of  the  Carpathians,  bulwark  of  Central 
Europe,  split  the  westward  moving  Slav  hordes  in  the 
6th  century,  diverting  one  southward  up  the  Danube  Valley 
to  the  Eastern  Alps,  and  turning  one  northward  along  the 
German  lowlands.20  The  northward  expansion  of  the 
Romans,  rebuffed  by  the  high  double  wall  of  the  Central 
Alps,  was  bent  to  the  westward  over  the  Maritime,  Cottine 
and  Savoy  Alps,  where  the  barrier  offered  the  shortest  and 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        533 

easiest  transmontane  routes.  Hence  Germany  received  the 
elements  of  Mediterranean  culture  indirectly  through 
Gaul,  second-hand  and  late.  The  ancient  Helvetians,  moving 
southward  from  northern  Switzerland  into  Gaul,  took  a  route 
skirting  the  western  base  of  the  Alps  by  the  gap  at  Geneva, 
and  thus  threatened  Roman  Provincia.  x  Caesar's  campaigns 
into  northern  Gaul  were  given  direction  by  the  massive 
Central  Plateau  of  France.27  The  rugged  and  infertile  area 
of  the  Catskills  long  retarded  the  westward  movement  in 
colonial  New  York  and  deflected  it  northward  through  the 
Mohawk  depression,  which  therefore  had  its  long  thin  line  of 
settlements  when  the  neighboring  Catskills  were  still  a  "bare 
spot." 

In  their  valleys,  mountains  lose  something  of  their  barrier  Signifi- 
nature,  and  approximate  the  level  of  the  plains.  Here  cance  of 
they  harbor  oases  of  denser  population  and  easier  intercourse.  ,, 
Valleys  favor  human  settlement  through  the  milder  climate 
of  their  lower  elevation,  the  accumulation  of  soil  on  their 
floors,  their  sheltered  environment,  and  their  command  of 
such  routes  of  communication  as  the  highlands  afford.  They 
are  the  avenues  into  and  within  a  mountain  system,  and 
therefore  radically  influence  its  history  by  their  direction  and 
location.  The  Central  Plateau  of  France,  through  the  valleys 
of  the  Alliers  and  upper  Loire,  is  most  accessible  from  the 
north;  therefore  in  that  direction  it  has  maintained  its  most 
important  historical  connections,28  from  the  days  of  Caesar  and 
Vercingetorix.  The  massive  highland  region  of  Transylvania, 
which  opens  long  accessible  valleys  westward  toward  the  plains 
of  the  Theiss  and  Danube,  has  since  the  eleventh  century  re- 
ceived thence  Hungarian  immigration  and  political  dominion.29 
Its  dominant  Roumanian  population,  however,  seems  to  have 
fled  thither  from  the  Tartar-swept  plains  to  the  southeast. 

The  anthropo-geography  of  mountain  valleys  depends 
upon  the  structure  of  the  highlands  themselves,  whether  they 
are  fold  mountains,  whose  ranges  wall  in  longitudinal  valleys, 
or  dissected  plateaus,  whose  valleys  are  mostly  transverse 
river  channels  leading  from  the  hydrographic  center  out  to 
the  rim  of  the  highlands.  Longitudinal  valleys  are  not  only 
long,  but  also  broad  as  a  rule  and  often  show  a  nearly  level 


534        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 

floor.30  They  therefore  form  districts  of  considerable  size, 
fertility,  and  individuality,  and  play  distinct  historical 
roles  in  the  history  of  their  respective  highlands.  Such  are 
the  upper  Rhone  Valley  with  its  long  line  of  flourishing  towns 
and  villages,  the  Hither.  Rhine,  the  Inn  of  the  Tyrol  and  the 
Engadine,  the  fertile  trough  of  the  meandering  Isere  above 
Grenoble,31  the  broad  Orontes-Lcontes  valley  between  the 
Lebanon  and  Anti-Lebanon  where  Kadesh  and  Baalbec  were 
once  the  glory  of  northern  Syria.  Such  is  the  central  trough 
of  the  Appalachian  Mountains,  known  as  the  Great  Appala- 
chian Valley,  seventy-five  miles  wide,  subdivided  into  con- 
stituent valleys  of  similar  character  by  parallel,  even-crested 
ridges  following  the  trend  of  the  mountains.  These  are 
drained  by  broad,  leisurely  rivers,  bordered  by  fertile  farms 
and  substantial  towns.  Transverse  valleys,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  generally  narrow,  with  steep  slopes  rising  almost 
from  the  river's  edge  and  supporting  only  small  villages  and 
farms.  A  comparison  of  the  spacious,  smooth-floored  valley 
of  Andermatt  with  the  wild  Reuss  gorge,  of  the  fertile  and 
populous  Shenandoah  Valley  in  the  Southern  Appalachians 
with  the  canon  of  the  Kanawha  in  the  Cumberland  Plateau, 
makes  the  contrast  striking  enough. 

Longitudi-  Longitudinal  valleys,  by  reason  of  their  length  and  their 

nal  valleys,  branching  lateral  valleys,  are  the  natural  avenues  of  com- 
munication within  the  mountains  themselves.  They  therefore 
give  a  dominant  direction  to  such  phases  of  the  historical 
movement  as  succeed  in  passing  the  outer  barrier.  The  series 
of  parallel  ranges  which  strike  off  from  the  eastern  enH  of 
the  Tibetan  plateau  southward  into  Farther  India  have 
directed  along  their  valleys  the  main  streams  of  Mongolian 
migration  and  "expansion,  heading  them  toward  the  river 
basins  of  Burma  and  Indo  China,  and  away  from  India  itself.32 
While  Tibetan  elements  have  during  the  ages  slowly  welled 
over  the  high  Himalayan  brim  and  trickled  down  toward 
the  Gangetic  plain,  Burma  has  been  deluged  bv  floods  of  Mon- 
golians pouring  down  the  runnels  of  the  land.  A  carriage 
road  follows  the  axis  of  the  Central  Alps  from  Lake  Geneva 
to  Lake  Constance  by  means  of  the  upper  Rhone,  Ander- 
matt, and  upper  Rhine  valleys,  linked  by  the  Furca  and 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        535 

Oberalp  passes.  The  Roman  and  Medieval  routes  north- 
ward across  the  Central  Alps  struck  the  upper  Rhine  Valley 
above  Coire,  (the  ancient  Curia  Rhaetorum)  ;  this  natural 
groove  gave  them  a  northeastward  direction,  and  made  them 
emerge  from  the  mountains  directly  south  of  Ulm,  which 
thereby  gained  great  importance.  The  trade  routes  from  Da- 
mascus and  Palmyra  which  once  entered  the  Orontes-Leontes 
trough  in  the  Lebanon  system  found  their  Mediterranean  ter- 
mini south  near  Tyre  or  north  near  Antioch,  and  thus  contrib- 
uted to  the  greatness  of  those  ancient  emporiums.  The  Great 
Appalachian  Valley  used  to  be  a  highway  for  the  Iroquois 
Indians,  when  they  took  the  warpath  against  the  Cherokee 
tribes  of  Tennessee.  Later  it  gave  a  distinct  southwestward 
trend  to  pioneer  movements  of  population  within  the 
mountains,  blending  in  its  common  channel  the  Quakers,  Ger- 
mans and  Scotch-Irish  from  Pennsylvania,  with  the  English 
and  Huguenot  French  of  the  more  southern  colonies.  In  the 
Civil  War  its  fertile  fields  were  swept  by  marching  armies, 
all  the  way  from  Chattanooga  to  Gettysburg. 

The  barrier  nature  of  mountains  depends  upon  their  Passes  in 
height  and  structure,  whether  they  are  massive,  unbroken  mountain 
walls  like  the  Scandinavian  Alps  and  the  Great  Smoky  range ;  ' 
or,  like  the  Welsh  Highlands  and  the  Blue  Ridge,  are  studded 
with  low  passes.  The  Pyrenees,  Caucasus  and  Andes,  owing 
to  the  scarcity  and  great  height  of  their  passes,  have  always 
been  serious  barriers.  The  Pyrenees  divide  Spain  from 
France  more  sharply  than  the  Alps  divide  Italy  from  France ; 
owing  to  their  rampart  character,  they  form  the  best  and  most 
definite  natural  boundary  in  Europe.33  Epirus  and  Aetolia, 
fenced  in  by  the  solid  Pindus  range,  took  little  part  in  the 
common  life  of  ancient  Greece ;  but  the  intermittent  chains  of 
Thessaly  offered  a  passway  between  Macedon  and  Hellas. 
The  Alps  have  an  astonishing  number  of  excellent  passes, 
evenly  distributed  for  the  most  part.  These,  in  conjunc- 
tion with  the  great  longitudinal  valleys  of  the  system,  offer 
transit  routes  from  side  to  side  in  any  direction.  The 
Appalachian  system  is  some  three  hundred  miles  broad  and 
thirteen  hundred  miles  long,  but  it  has  many  easy  gaps  among 
its  parallel  ranges,  so  that  it  offered  natural  though  cir- 


536        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 


Breadth  of 

mountain 

barriers. 


cuitous  highways  to  the  early  winners  of  the  West.  The 
long  line  (400  miles)  of  the  Hindu  Kush  range,  high  as  it  is, 
forms  no  strong  natural  boundary  to  India,  because  it  is 
riddled  with  passes  at  altitudes  from  12,500  to  19,000  feet.34 
The  easternmost  group  of  these  passes  lead  down  to  Kash- 
mir, ancT  therefore  lend  this  state  peculiar  importance  as 
guardian  of  these  northern  entrances  to  India.35  The  Sulei- 
man Mountains  along  the  Indo-Afghan  frontier  are  an  im- 
perfect defence  for  the  same  reason.  They  are  indented  by 
289  passes  capable  of  being  traversed  by  camels.  The  moun- 
tain border  of  Baluchistan  contains  75  more,  the  most  im- 
portant of  which  focus  their  roads  upon  Kandahar.  Hence 
the  importance  to  British  India  of  Kandahar  and  Afghanis- 
tan. Across  this  broken  northwest  barrier  have  come  almost 
all  the  floods  of  invasion  and  immigration  that  have  con- 
tributed their  varied  elements  to  the  mixed  population  of 
India.  Tradition,  epic  and  history  tell  of  Asiatic  highlanders 
ever  sweeping  down  into  the  warm  valley  of  the  Indus 
through  these  passes ;  Scythians,  Aryans,  Greeks,  Assyrians, 
Medes,  Persians,  Turks,  Tartars,  and  Mongols  have  all 
traveled  these  rocky  roads,  to  rest  in  the  enervating  valleys 
of  the  peninsula.36 

Mountains  folded  into  a  succession  of  parallel  ranges  are 
greater  obstructions  than  a  single  range  like  the  Erz,  Black 
Forest,  and  Vosges,  or  a  narrow,  compact  system  like  the 
Western  Alps,  which  can  be  crossed  by  a  single  pass.  Owing 
to  this  simple  structure  the  Western  Alps  were  traversed  by 
four  established  routes  in  the  days  of  the  Roman  Empire. 
These  were:  1.  The  Via  Aurelia  between  the  Maritime  Alps 
and  the  sea,  where  now  runs  the  Cornice  Road.  II.  The 
Mons  Matrona  (Mont  Genevre  Pass,  6080  feet  or  1854  kilo- 
meters) between  the  headstream  of  the  Dora  Riparia  and 
that  of  the  Durance,  which  was  the  best  highway  for  armies. 
III.  The  Little  St.  Bernard  (7075  feet  or  2157  meters), 
from  Aosta  on  the  Dora  Baltea  over  to  the  Isere  and  down 
to  Lugdunum  (Lyons).  IV.  The  Great  St.  Bernard  (8109 
feet  or  2472  meters)  route,  which  led  northward  from  Aosta 
over  the  Pennine  Alps  to  Octodurus  at  the  elbow  of  the  upper 
Rhone,  where  Martigny  now  stands.  Across  the  broad  double 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        537 

rampart  of  the  Central  Alps  the  Roman  used  chiefly  the 
Brenner  route,  which  by  a  low  saddle  unites  the  deep  reen- 
trant valleys  of  the  Adige  and  Inn  rivers,  and  thus  surmounts 
the  barrier  by  a  single  pass.  However,  a  short  cut  north- 
ward over  the  Chalk  Alps  by  the  Fern  Pass  made  closer 
connection  with  Augusta  Vindelicorum  (Augsburg).  The 
Romans  seem  to  have  been  ignorant  of  the  St.  Gotthard, 
which,  though  high,  is  the  summit  of  an  unbroken  ascent 
from  Lake  Maggiore  up  the  valley  of  the  Ticino  on  one  side, 
and  from  Lake  Lucerne  up  the  Reuss  on  the  other. 

Mountains  which  spread  out  on  a  broad  base  in  a  series 
of  parallel  chains,  and  through  which  no  long  transverse 
valleys  offer  ready  transit,  form  serious  barriers  to  every 
phase  of  intercourse.  The  lofty  boundary  wall  of  the  Pyre- 
nees, a  folded  mountain  system  of  sharp  ranges  and  difficult 
passes,  has  successfully  separated  Spain  from  continental 
Europe;  it  has  given  the  Iberian  Peninsula,  in  the  course 
of  a  long  history,  closer  relations  with  Morocco  than  with 
its  land  neighbor  France.  It  thus  justifies  the  French  saying 
that  "Africa  begins  at  the  Pyrenees."  The  Andalusian  fold 
mountains  stretching  across  southern  Spain  in  a  double  wall 
from  Trafalgar  to  Cape  Nao,  accessible  only  by  narrow  and 
easily  defended  passes,  enabled  the  Moors  of  Granada  to 
hold  their  own  for  centuries  against  the  Spaniard  Christians. 
The  high  thin  ridges  of  the  folded  Jura  system,  poor  in  soil 
and  sparsely  populated,  broken  by  occasional  "cluses"  or 
narrow  water-gaps  admitting  the  rivers  from  one  elevated 
longitudinal  valley  to  another,  have  always  been  a  serious 
hindrance  to  traffic.37 

Such  mountains  can  be  crossed  only  by  circuitous  routes  Circuitous 
from  pass  to  pass,  ascending  and  descending  each  range  of  routes 
the  system.     The  Central  Alps,  grooved  by  the  longitudinal  trough 

valleys  of  the  upper  Rhone,  Rhine  and  Inn,  make  transit 

mountains, 
travel    a    series    of    ups    and    downs.      The    northern    range 

must  be  crossed  by  some  minor  pass  like  the  Gemmi,  (7553 
feet)  or  Panixer  (7907  feet)  to  the  longitudinal  valleys, 
and  the  southern  range  again  by  the  Simplon  (6595  feet), 
San  Bernadino  (6768  feet),  Spliigen  (6946  feet)  or  Septi- 
mer  (7582  feet)  to  the  Po  basin.  Across  the  corrugated 


538        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 


Dominant 
trans- 
montane 
routes. 


highland  of  the  Hindu  Kush,  lying  between  the  plains  of  the 
Indus  and  the  Oxus,  the  caravans  of  western  Asia  seek 
the  market  of  the  Punjab  by  a  circuitous  route  through  the 
Hajikhak  Pass  (12,188  feet)  or  famous  Gates  of  Bamian 
over  the  main  range  of  the  Hindu  Kush,  by  the  Unai  Pass 
over  the  Paghman  Mountains  to  Kabul  at  5710  feet,  and 
then  by  gorges  of  the  Kabul  River  and  the  Khaibar  Pass 
(6825  feet)  down  to  Peshawar.  This  road  presents  so  many 
difficulties  that  caravans  from  Turkestan  to  India  prefer 
another  route  irom  Merv  up  the  valley  of  the  Heri-Rud 
through  the  western  hills  of  the  Hindu  Kush  to  Herat,  thence 
diagonally  southeast  across  Afghanistan  to  Kandahar,  and 
thence  by  the  Bolan  Pass  down  to  the  ^'iiul.  The  broad,  low 
series  of  forested  mountains  consisting  of  the  Vindhyan  and 
Kaimur  Hills,  reinforced  by  the  Satpura,  Kalabet,  Gawilgurh 
ranges,  Mahadeo  Hills,  Maikal  Range  and  Chutia  Nagpur 
Plateau  as  a  secondary  ridge  to  the  south,  forms  a  double 
barrier  across  the  base  of  peninsular  India.  It  divides  the 
Deccan  from  Hindustan  so  effectually  that  it  has  sufficed  to 
set  limits  to  any  Aryan  advance  en  masse  southward.  It 
kept  southern  India  isolated,  and  admitted  only  later 
Aryan  influences  which  filtered  through  the  barrier.  To 
people  accustomed  to  treeless  plains,  these  wide  belts  of 
wooded  hills  were  barrier  enough.  Even  a  few  years  ago 
their  passes  were  dreaded  by  cartmen ;  most  of  the  carriage 
of  the  country  was  effected  by  pack-bullocks.  Even  when 
roads  were  cleared  through  the  forests,  they  were  likely  to  be 
rendered  impassable  by  torrential  rains. 3S 

Where  a  broad,  complex  mountain  system  contracts  to  nar- 
row compass,  or  is  cut  by  deep  reentrant  valleys  leading  up 
to  a  single  pass,  the  transmontane  route  here  made  by  nature 
assumes  great  historical  importance.  The  double  chain  of 
the  mighty  Caucasus,  from  120  to  150  miles  wide  and  750 
miles  long,  stretches  an  almost  insuperable  barrier  between 
the  Black  Sea  and  the  Caspian.  But  nearly  midway  be- 
tween these  two  seas  it  is  constricted  to  only  60  miles  by  a 
geographical  and  geological  gulf,  which  penetrates  from  the 
steppes  of  Russia  almost  to  the  heart  of  the  system.39  This 
gulf  forms  the  high  valley  of  the  Terek  River,  beyond 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        539 

whose  headstream  lies  the  Dariel  defile  (7503  feet  or  2379 
meters),  which  continues  the  natural  depression  across  to  the 
short  southern  slope.  All  the  other  passes  of  the  Caucasus 
are  3000  meters  or  more  high,  lie  above  snow  line  and  are 
therefore  open  only  in  summer.  The  Dariel  Pass  alone  is 
open  all  the  year  around.40  Here  runs  the  great  military  road 
from  Vladicaucas  to  Tiflis,  which  the  Russians  have  built  to 
control  their  turbulent  mountaineer  subjects;  and  here  are 
located  the  Ossetes,  the  only  people  among  the  variegated 
tribes  of  the  whole  Caucasus  who  occupy  both  slopes.  All 
the  other  tribes  and  languages  are  confined  to  one  side  or  the 
other.41  Moreover,  the  Ossetes,  occupying  an  exposed  loca- 
tion in  their  highway  habitat,  lack  the  courage  of  the  other 
mountaineers,  and  yielded  without  resistance  to  the  Russians. 
In  this  respect  they  resemble  the  craven-spirited  Kashmiri, 
whose  mountain-walled  vale  forms  a  passway  from  Central 
Asia  down  to  the  Punjab. 

The  Pass  of  Dariel,  owing  to  its  situation  in  a  retarded  Bfenner 
corner  of  Asia,  has  never  attained  the  historical  importance 
which  attaches  to  the  deep  saddle  of  the  Brenner  Pass  (4470 
feet)  in  the  Central  Alps.  Uniting  the  reentrant  val- 
leys of  the  Inn  and  Adige  rivers  only  2760  feet  above  the  Inn's 
exit  from  the  mountains  upon  the  Bavarian  plateau,  it  forms 
a  low,  continuous  line  of  communication  across  the  Central 
Alps.  The  Brenner  was  the  route  of  the  Cimbri  invading  the 
Po  Valley,  and  later  of  the  Roman  forces  destined  for  frontier 
posts  of  the  Empire  on  the  upper  Danube.  In  the  Middle 
Ages  it  was  the  route  for  the  armies  of  the  German  Emperors 
who  came  to  make  good  their  claim  to  Italy.  By  this  road 
came  the  artists  and  artisans  of  the  whole  north  country  to 
learn  the  arts  and  crafts  of  beauty-loving  Venice.  From  the 
Roman  road-makers  to  the  modern  railroad  engineer,  with  the 
concomitant  civilization  of  each,  the  Brenner  has  seen  the 
march  of  human  progress. 

Farther  to  the  west,  the  wall  of  highlands  stretching  across  Pass  of 
southern   Europe  is  interrupted  by   a  deep  groove   formed  Belfort. 
by  the  mountain-flanked  Rhone  Valley  and  the  Pass  of  Bel- 
fort,  or  Burgundian  Gate,  which  lies  between  the  Vosges  and 
Jura  system,   and  connects  the  Rhone   road  with  the  long 


540        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 

rift  valley  of  the  middle  Rhino.  This  pass,  broad  and  low 
(350  meters  or  1148  feet)  marks  the  insignificant  summit 
in  the  great  historic  route  of  travel  between  the  Mediter- 
ranean and  the  North  Sea,  from  the  days  of  ancient  Etruscan 
merchants  to  the  present.  This  was  the  route  of  the  invading 
Teuton  hordes  which  the  Roman  Marius  defeated  at  Aquae 
Sextiae,  and  later,  of  the  Germans  under  Ariovistus,  whom 
Cassar  defeated  near  the  present  Miihlhausen.  Four  centuries 
afterward  came  the  Alamannians,  Burgundians  and  other 
Teutonic  stocks,  who  infused  a  tall  blond  element  into  the 
population  of  the  Rhone  Valley.42  The  Pass  of  Belfort  is  the 
strategic  key  to  Central  Europe.  Here  Napoleon  repeatedly 
fixed  his  military  base  for  the  invasion  of  Austria,  and  hither 
was  directed  one  division  of  the  German  army  in  1870  for 
the  invasion  of  France.  The  gap  is  traversed  to-day  by  a 
canal  connecting  the  Doubs  and  the  Rhine  and  by  a  railroad, 
just  as  formerly  by  the  tracks  of  migrating  barbarians. 
Mohawk  The  natural  depression  of  the  Mohawk  Valley,  only  445 

route.  feet  (136  meters)  above  sea  level,  is  the  only  decided  break 

across  the  entire  width  of  the  long  Appalachian  system.  This 
fact,  together  with  its  ready  accessibility  from  the  Hudson 
on  the  east  and  Lake  Ontario  on  the  west,  lent  it  importance 
in  the  early  history  of  the  colonies,  as  well  as  in  the  later 
history  of  New  York.  It  was  an  easy  line  of  communica- 
tion with  the  Great  Lakes,  and  gave  the  colonists  access  to 
the  fur  trade  of  the  Northwest,  then  in  the  hands  of  the 
French.  So  when  French  and  English  fought  for  supremacy 
in  the  New  World,  the  Mohawk  and  Hudson  valleys  were 
their  chief  battleground ;  elsewhere  the  broad  Appalachian 
barrier  held  them  apart.  Again  in  the  Revolution,  control 
of  the  Mohawk-Hudson  route  was  the  objective  of  the  British 
armies  mobilized  on  the  Canadian  frontier,  because  it  alone 
would  enable  them  to  co-operate  with  the  British  fleet  blockad- 
ing the  coast  cities  of  the  colonies.  In  the  War  of  1812,  it 
was  along  this  natural  transmontane  highway  that  supplies 
were  forwarded  to  the  remote  frontier,  to  support  Perry's 
fight  for  control  of  the  Great  Lakes.  The  war  demonstrated 
the  strategic  necessity  of  a  protected,  wholly  American  line 
of  water  communication  between  the  Hudson  and  our  western 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        541 

frontier,  while  the  commercial  and  political  advantage  was 
obvious.  Hence  a  decade  after  the  conclusion  of  the  war, 
this  depression  was  traced  by  the  Erie  Canal,  through  which 
passed  long  lines  of  boats  to  build  up  the  commercial  great- 
ness of  New  York  City. 

Other  structural  features  being  the  same,  mountains  are  Height  in 
barriers  also  in  proportion  to  their  height ;  for,  with  few  mountain 
exceptions,  the  various  anthropo-geographic  effects  of  up- 
heaved areas  are  intensified  with  increase  of  elevation.  Old, 
worn-down  mountains,  like  the  Appalachians  and  the  Ural, 
broad  as  they  are,  have  been  less  effective  obstacles  than  the 
towering  crests  of  the  Alps  and  Caucasus.  The  form  of  the 
elevation  also  counts.  Easy  slopes  and  flat  or  rounded 
summits  make  readier  transit  regions  than  high,  thin  ridges 
with  escarpment-like  flanks.  Mountains  of  plateau  form, 
though  reaching  a  great  altitude,  may  be  relatively  hospit- 
able to  the  historical  movement  and  even  have  a  regular 
nomadic  population  in  summer.  The  central  and  western 
Tian  Shan  system  is  in  reality  a  broad,  high  plateau, 
divided  into  a  series  of  smoothly  floored  basins  and 
gently  rolling  ridges  lying  at  an  elevation  of  10,000  to 
12,000  feet  above  the  sea.  Its  pamirs  or  plains  of  thick 
grass,  nourished  by  the  relatively  heavy  precipitation  of 
this  high  altitude,  and  forming  in  summer  an  island  of  ver- 
dure in  the  surrounding  sea  of  sun-scorched  waste,  attract 
the  pastoral  nomads  from  all  the  bordering  steppes  and 
deserts.*3  Thus  it  is  a  meeting  place  for  a  seasonal  popula- 
tion, sparse  and  evanescent,  but  its  uplifted  mass  holds 
asunder  the  few  sedentary  peoples  fringing  its  piedmont. 
The  corrugated  dome  of  the  Pamir  highland,  whose  valley 
iioors  lie  at  an  elevation  of  11,000  to  13,000  feet,  draws  to 
its  summer  pastures  Kirghis  shepherds  from  north,  east  and 
west ;  and  their  flocks  in  turn  attract  the  raids  of  the  maraud- 
ing mountaineers  occupying  the  Hunza  Valley  to  the  south. 
The  Pamir,  high  but  accessible,  was  a  passway  in  the  tenth 
century  for  Chinese  caravans  bound  from  "Serica"  or  the 
"Land  of  Silk"  to  the  Oxus  River  and  the  Caspian.  Here 
Marco  Polo  and  many  travelers  after  him  found  fodder  for 
their  pack  animals  and  food  for  themselves,  because  they 


542        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 


Contrasted 
accessi- 
bility of 
opposite 
slopes. 


Its  ethnic 
effects. 


could  always  purchase  meat  from  the  visiting  shepherds. 
The  possibilities  of  the  Pamir  as  a  transit  region  are  ap- 
parent to  Russia,  who  in  1886  annexed  most  of  it  to  the 
government  of  Bukhara. 

Mountains  are  seldom  equally  accessible  from  all  sides. 
Rarely  does  the  crest  of  a  system  divide  it  symmetrically. 
This  means  a  steep,  difficult  approach  to  the  summit  from 
one  direction,  and  a  longer,  more  gradual,  and  hence  easier 
ascent  from  the  other.  It  means  also  in  general  a  wide  zone 
of  habitation  and  food  supply  on  the  gentler  slope,  a  better 
commissary  and  transport  base  whence  to  make  the  final 
ascent,  whether  in  conquest,  trade  or  ethnic  growth.  Moun- 
tain boundaries  are  therefore  rarely  by  nature  impartial. 
They  do  not  umpire  the  great  game  of  expansion  fairly. 
They  lower  the  bars  to  the  advancing  people  on  one  side,  and 
hold  them  relentlessly  in  place  to  the  other.  To  the  favored 
slope  they  give  the  strategic  advantage  of  a  swift  and  sudden 
descent  beyond  the  summit  down  the  opposite  side.  The 
political  boundary  of  France  along  the  watershed  of  the 
Vosges  Mountains  is  backed  by  a  long,  gradual  ascent  from 
the  Seine  lowland  and  faces  a  sharp  drop  to  the  rift  valley 
of  the  middle  Rhine.  Its  boundary  along  the  crest  of  the 
Alps  from  Mont  Blanc  to  the  Mediterranean  brings  over 
two-thirds  of  the  upheaved  area  within  the  domain  of  France, 
and  gives  to  that  country  great  advantages  of  approach  to 
the  Alpine  passes  at  the  expense  of  Italy.  With  the  exception 
of  the  ill-matched  conflict  between  the  civilized  Romans  and 
the  barbarian  Gauls,  it  is  a  matter  of  history  that  from  the 
days  of  Hannibal  to  Napoleon  III,  the  campaigns  over 
the  Alps  from  the  north  have  succeeded,  while  those  from  the 
steep-rimmed  Po  Valley  have  miscarried.  The  Brenner  route 
favored  alike  the  Cimbri  hordes  in  102  B.  C.  and  later  the 
medieval  German  Emperors  invading  Italy  from  the  upper 
Danube.  The  drop  from  the  Brenner  Pass  to  Munich 
is  2800  feet ;  to  Rovereto,  an  equally  distant  point  on  the 
Italian  side,  the  road  descends  3770  feet. 

The  inequality  of  slope  has  ethnic  as  well  as  political 
effects,  especially  where  a  latitudinal  direction  also  makes 
a  sharp  contrast  of  climate  on  the  two  sides  of  the  mountain 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES  543 

system.  Except  in  the  Roman  period,  the  southern  face 
of  the  Alps  has  been  an  enclosing  wall  to  the  Italians.  The 
southern  cultivator  penetrated  its  high  but  sunny  valleys 
only  when  forced  by  poverty,  while  the  harsh  climate  on  the 
long  northern  slope  effectively  repelled  him.  On  the  other 
hand,  Switzerland  has  overstepped  the  Alpine  crest  in  the 
province  of  Ticino  and  thrust  its  political  boundary  in  a 
long  wedge  down  to  the  lowland  of  the  Po  near  Como ;  and  the 
Alpine  race,  spilling  everywhere  over  the  mountain  rim  into 
the  inviting  Po  basin,  has  given  to  this  lowland  population 
a  relatively  broad  skull,  blond  coloring  and  tall  figure,  sharply 
contrasted  with  the  pure  Mediterranean  race  beyond  the  crest 
of  the  Apennines.44 

The  long  northward  slope  of  the  Alps  in  Switzerland  and 
Tyrol,  and  the  easy  western  grade  toward  France,  have  en- 
abled Germanic  and  Gallic  influences  of  various  kinds  to 
permeate  the  mountains.  A  strong  element  of  blond,  long- 
headed Germans  mingles  in  the  population  of  the  Aar  and 
Rhine  valleys  up  to  the  ice-capped  ridge  of  the  Glarner  and 
Bernese  Alps,45  while  the  virile  German  speech  has  pushed 
yet  farther  south  to  the  insuperable  barrier  of  the  Monte 
Rosa  group.  The  abrupt  southward  slope  of  the  Him- 
alayas has  repelled  ethnic  expansion  from  the  river  low- 
lands of  northern  India,  except  in  the  mountain  valleys  of 
the  Punjab  streams  and  Nepal,  where  the  highland  offered 
asylum  to  the  Rajput  race  when  dislodged  by  a  later  Aryan 
invasion,  or  when  trying  their  energies  in  expansion  and 
conquest.46  The  Tibetan  people,  whose  high  plateaus  rise 
almost  flush  with  the  Himalayan  passes,  have  everywhere 
trickled  through  and  given  a  Mongoloid  mountain  border  to 
Aryan  India,47  even  though  their  speech  has  succumbed  to 
the  pervasive  Aryan  language  of  the  piedmont,  and  thus 
confused  the  real  ethnic  boundary.  [See  map  page  102.] 
The  retarded  and  laborious  approach  of  British  "influence" 
up  this  steep  ascent  to  Lhassa,  as  opposed  to  the  long  estab- 
lished suzerainty  of  the  Chinese  Emperor  in  Tibet,  can  be  at- 
tributed in  part  to  the  contrasted  accessibility  from  north  and  persistence 
south.  of  barrier 

Mountains  influence  the  life  of  their  inhabitants  and  their  nature. 


544        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 

neighbors  fundamentally  and  variously,  but  always  reveal 
their  barrier  nature.  For  the  occupants  of  one  slope  they 
provide  an  abundant  rainfall,  hold  up  the  clouds,  and  rob 
them  of  their  moisture;  to  the  leeward  side  they  admit  dry 
winds,  and  only  from  the  melting-  snow  or  the  precipita- 
tion on  their  summits  do  they  yield  a  scanty  supply  of  water. 
The  Himalayas  are  flanked  by  the  teeming  population  of 
India  and  the  scattered  nomadic  tribes  of  Tibet.  Mountains 
often  draw  equally  clear  cut  lines  of  cleavage  in  temperature. 
The  Scandinavian  range  concentrates  upon  Norway  the 
warm,  soft  air  of  the  Atlantic  westerlies,  while  just  below  the 
watershed  on  the  eastern  side  Sweden  feels  all  the  rigor  of  a 
sub-Arctic  climate.  In  history,  too,  mountains  play  the 
same  part  as  barriers.  They  are  always  a  challenge  to  the 
energies  of  man.  Their  beauty,  the  charm  of  the  unknown 
beyond  tempts  the  enterprising  spirit;  the  hardships  and 
dangers  of  their  roads  daunt  or  baffle  the  mediocre,  but  by 
the  great  ones  whose  strength  is  able  to  dwarf  these  obstacles 
is  found  beyond  a  prize  of  victory.  Such  were  Hannibal, 
Napoleon,  Suvaroff,  Genghis  Khan,  and  those  lesser  heroes 
of  the  modern  work-a-day  world  who  toiled  across  the  Rockies 
and  Sierras  in  the  feverish  days  of  '49,  or  who  faced  the 
snows  of  Chilkoot  Pass  for  the  frozen  gold-fields  of  the  Yukon. 
Importance  For  migrating,  warring  and  trading  humanity  therefore, 
of  moun-  tne  interest  of  the  mountains  is  centered  In  the  passes.  "These 
in  passe*.  ftre  ^jy  dents  or  depressions  in  the  great  up-lifted  crest, 

Xor  gaps  carved  out  by  streams,  or  deeper  breaches  in  the 
mountain  wall ;  but  they  point  the  easiest  pathway  to  the 
ultramontane  country,  and  for  this  reason  focus  upon  them- 
selves the  travel  that  would  cut  across  the  grain  of  the 
earth's  wrinkled  crust.  Their  influence  reaches  far.  The 
Brenner,  by  its  medieval  trade,  made  the  commercial  great- 
ness of  Augsburg,  Ratisbon,  Nuremberg,  and  Leipzig  to  the 
north,  and  promoted  the  growth  of  Venice  to  the  south.  The 
Khaibar  Pass  and  the  Gates  of  Herat  in  Afghanistan  have 
for  long  periods  dominated  the  Asiatic  policy  of  Russia 
and  British  India.  The  Mohawk  depression  and  Cumberland 
Gap  for  decades  gave  direction  to  the  streams  of  population 
moving  westward  into  the  Mississippi  basin  in  the  early  his- 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        545 

tory  of  the  Republic.     Where  Truckee  Pass   (7017   feet) 

makes  a  gash  in  the  high  ridge  of  the  Sierra  Nevada,  the 
California  Trail  in  1844  sought  the  line  of  least  resistance 
across  the  barrier  mass,  and  deposited  its  desert-worn  immi- 
grants about  the  Sacramento  Valley  and  San  Francisco  Bay. 
There  they  made  a  nucleus  of  American  population  in  Mexican 
California,  and  in  1846  became  the  center  of  American  revolt. 

Though  modern  engineering  skill,  especially  when  backed  Persistent 
by  a  political  policy,  may  cause  certain  passes  to  gain  in  influence 
historical  importance  at  the  cost  of  others,  the  rule  holds  Passes« 
that  passes  are  never  quite  insignificant.  Their  influence  is 
persistent  through  the  ages.  They  are  nature-made 
thoroughfares,  traversed  now  by  undisciplined  hordes  of 
migrating  barbarians,  now  by  organized  armies,  now  by 
the  woolly  flocks  and  guardian  dogs  of  the  nomad  shepherd, 
now  by  the  sumpter  mule  of  the  itinerant  merchant,  now  by 
the  wagon-trains  of  over-mountain  settlers,  now  by  the  steam 
engine  panting  up  the  steep  grade.  Nowhere  does  history 
repeat  itself  so  monotonously,  yet  so  interestingly  as  in  these 
mountain  gates.  In  the  Pass  of  Roncesvalles,  notching  the 
western  Pyrenees  between  Pamplona  in  Spain  and  St.  Etienne 
in  France,  fell  the  army  of  Charlemagne  surprised  and  beset 
by  the  mountain  tribes  in  778  ;4S  through  this  breach  the 
Black  Prince  in  1367  led  his  troops  to  the  victory  of 
Navarette ;  in  the  Peninsular  War  a  division  of  Wellington's 
army  in  1813  moved  northward  up  this  valley,  driving  the 
French  before  them ;  and  by  this  route  Soult  advanced  south- 
ward across  the  frontier  for  the  relief  of  the  French  forces 
shut  up  in  Pamplona.  The  history  of  Palestine  may  be  read 
in  epitome  in  the  annals  of  the  Vale  of  Jezreel,  where  the 
highlands  of  Palestine  sink  to  a  natural  trough  before  rising 
again  to  the  hill  country  of  Galilee  and  the  mountain  range 
of  high  Lebanon.  This  was  the  avenue  for  war  and  trade 
between  the  Nile  and  Euphrates,  between  Africa  and  Asia. 
Here  the  Canaanites  expanded  eastward  from  the  coast,  cut- 
ting off  northern  Israel  in  Galilee  from  Samaria  and  Judea. 
Here  Gideon  turned  back  the  incursions  of  the  Midianites 
or  western  Arabs.  Here  was  the  open  road  for  Assyrians, 
Egyptians,  for  Greek  armies  under  Antiochus,  and  Roman 


546        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 


Geographic 
factors  in 
the  his- 
torical im- 
portance of 
passes. 


armies  under  Pompcy,  Mark  Antony,  Vespasian  and  Titus. 
Hither  came  the  Saracens  from  the  east  in  634  A.  D.  to  rout 
the  Greek  army,  and  later  the  Crusaders  from  the  west,  to 
secure  with  castle  and  fortress  this  key  to  the  Holy  Land. 
Finally,  hither  came  Napoleon  from  Egypt  in  1799  on  his 
way  to  the  Euphrates.40 

The  historical  importance  of  passes  tends  to  increase  with 
the  depth  of  the  depression,  since  the  lowest  gap  in  a  range 
relegates  the  others  to  only  occasional  or  local  use;  and  with 
their  rarity,  in  consequence  of  which  intercourse  between  op- 
posite slopes  is  concentrated  upon  one  or  two  defiles.  The  low 
dips  of  the  Central  American  Cordilleras  to  262  feet  (80 
meters)  at  Panama,  151  feet  (46  meters)  in  the  Nicaraguan 
isthmus,  and  689  feet  (210  meters)  at  Tehuantepec,  present  a 
striking  contrast  both  orographically  and  historically  to  the 
South  American  Andes,  where  from  the  equator  to  the  Uspal- 
lata  or  Bermejo  Pass  (12,562  feet  or  3842  meters)  back  of 
Valparaiso,  a  stretch  measuring  33  degrees  of  latitude,  the 
passes  all  reach  or  exceed  10,000  feet  or  3000  meters.  The 
southern  or  Pennine  range  of  the  Alps,  stretching  as  a  snow- 
wrapped  barrier  from  Mont  Blanc  90  miles  to  the  central 
Alpine  dome  of  the  St.  Gotthard,  is  notched  only  by  the  Great 
St.  Bernard  and  Simplon  passes,  which  have  therefore  figured 
conspicuously  in  war  and  trade,  since  very  early  times.  The 
Pass  of  Thermopylae,  as  the  only  route  southward  along 
the  flank  of  the  Pindus  system,  figures  in  every  land  invasion 
of  Greece  from  Xerxes  to  the  Greek  war  of  independence. 
All  movements  back  and  forth  across  the  Caucasus  wall  have 
been  confined  to  the  Pass  of  Dariel  and  the  far  lower  Pass 
of  Derbent,  or  Pyloe  Albania;  of  the  ancients,  which  lies  be- 
tween the  Caspian  and  the  last  low  spurs  of  the  mountains 
as  they  drop  down  to  the  sea.  The  latter,  as  the  easier  of 
the  two  passes,  has  had  a  longer  and  richer  history.  It  alone 
enabled  the  ancient  Persians  temporarily  to  force  a  wedge 
of  conquest  to  the  northern  foot  of  the  Caucasus,  and  it  has 
been  in  all  ages  a  highway  for  peoples  entering  Persia  and 
Georgia  from  the  north.  It  has  so  far  been  the  only  practi- 
cable route  for  a  railway  from  the  Russian  steppes  to  the 
southern  base  of  the  Caucasus.  While  Vladicaucas  and  Tif- 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES         547 

lis  have  direct  connection  by  the  military  highway  over  the 
Pass  of  Dariel,  the  railroad  between  these  two  points  makes 
a  detour  of  300  miles  to  the  east. 

Intermarine  mountains  as  a  rule  offer  the  easiest  passways  Inter- 
where  they  sink  to  meet  the  flanking  seas.  The  Pyrenees  marine 
are  crossed  by  only  two  railroads,  the  Bayonne-Burgos  line, 
along  the  shore  of  the  Bay  of  Biscay,  and  the  Narbonne- 
Barcelona  line,  overlooking  the  Mediterranean.  Between 
these  extremities  the  passes  are  very  high  and  only  two  are 
practicable  for  carriages,  the  Col  de  la  Perche  (5280  feet 
or  1610  meters)  between  the  valleys  of  the  Tet  and  the  upper 
Segre,  and  the  Port  de  Canfranc  (7502  feet  or  2288  meters) 
on  the  old  Roman  road  from  Saragossa  to  Oloron.  The 
coastal  road  around  the  eastern  end  of  the  Cheviot  Hills  has 
been  the  great  intermediary  between  England  and  Scotland. 
It  was  the  avenue  for  early  Teutonic  expansion  into  the 
Scotch  Lowlands,  the  thoroughfare  for  all  those  armies  which 
for  centuries  made  Berwick  a  chronic  battleground. 

For  purposes  of  trade  these  intermarine  mountains  are  less 
serious  barriers,  because  they  can  be  avoided  by  an  easier 
and  cheaper  sea  route.  Hence  on  each  side  of  such  ranges 
grow  up  active  ports,  like  Narbonne  and  Barcelona,  Bayonne 
and  Bilbao  with  San  Sebastian,  on  the  piedmont  seaboard 
of  the  Pyrenees ;  Petrovsk  and  Baku  on  the  Caspian  rim  of 
the  Caucasus,  balancing  the  Crimean  ports  and  Poti  with 
Trebizond  on  the  Black  Sea.  Analogous  is  the  position  of 
Genoa  and  Marseilles  in  relation  to  the  Maritime  Alps.  Such 
ports  are  inevitably  the  object  of  attack  in  time  of  hostilities. 
In  the  Peninsular  War  almost  the  first  act  of  the  French  was 
to  seize  Barcelona,  San  Sebastian  and  Bilbao ;  and  through- 
out the  seven  years  of  the  conflict  these  points  were  centers  of 
battle,  blockade  and  siege.  If  Russia  ever  tries  to  wrench  the 
upper  Euphrates  Valley  from  Turkey,  Trebizond  will  repeat 
the  history  of  Barcelona  in  the  Peninsular  War. 

As   the  world's   roads   are   used   primarily   for   commerce,  Pass  roads 
pass  routes  rank  in  importance  according  to  the  amount  of  between 
trade  which  they  forward ;  and  this  in  turn  is  decided  by  "i10118  of 
the  contrast  in  the  lands  which  they  unite.     The  passes  of       H     ti 
the  Alps  and  the  Pass  of  Belfort  have  been  busy  thorough- 


548        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 


Passes 
determine 
trans- 
montane 
roads. 


fares  from  the  early  Middle  Ages,  because  they  facilitate 
exchanges  between  the  tropical  Mediterranean  and  the  tem- 
perate regions  of  Central  Europe.  Or  the  contrast  may  be 
one  of  economic  and  social  development.  The  Mohawk  de- 
pression forwards  the  grain  of  the  agricultural  Northwest  in 
return  for  the  manufactured  wares  of  the  Atlantic  seaboard. 
The  passes  of  the  Asiatic  ranges  connect  the  industrial 
and  agricultural  lowlands  of  India  and  China  with  the 
highland  pastures  of  Mongolia,  Tibet,  Afghanistan  and 
Russian  Turkestan.  Hence  they  forward  the  wool,  skins,  felts, 
cloth  and  carpets  of  the  wandering  shepherds  in  exchange  for 
the  food  stuffs  and  industrial  products  of  the  fertile,  crowded 
lowlands.  Where  passes  open  a  highway  for  inland  countries 
to  the  sea,  their  sphere  of  influence  is  greatly  increased.  San 
Francisco,  New  York,  Marseilles,  Genoa,  Venice,  Beirut  and 
Bombay  are  seaports  which  owe  their  importance  in  no  small 
degree  to  dominant  pass  routes  into  their  hinterland. 

In  plains  and  lowlands  highways  may  run  in  any  direction 
expediency  suggests,  but  in  mountain  regions  the  pass  points 
the  road.  In  very  high  ranges  there  is  no  appeal  from  this 
law;  but  in  lower  systems  and  especially  in  old  mountains 
which  have  been  rounded  and  worn  down  by  ages  of  denuda- 
tion, economic  and  social  considerations  occasionally  tran- 
scend orographical  conditions  in  fixing  the  path  of  highways. 
Scarcely  less  important  than  pass  or  gap  is  the  avenue  of  ap- 
proach to  the  same.  This  is  furnished  by  lateral  or  transverse 
valleys  of  erosion.  The  deeper  their  reentrant  angles  cut  back 
into  the  heart  of  the  highlands,  the  more  they  facilitate  inter- 
course and  lend  historical  importance  to  the  pass  route.  The 
Alpine  passes  which  are  approached  by  a  single  valley  from 
each  side  are  those  crossed  by  railroads  to-day, — Mont  Cenis, 
Simplon,  St.  Gotthard  and  the  Brenner.  The  Alpine  chain 
is  trenched  on  its  inner  or  southern  side  by  a  series  of  trans- 
verse erosion  valleys,  such  as  the  Dora  Baltea,  Sesia,  Tosa, 
Ticino,  Adda,  Adige,  and  Tagliamento,  which  carry  roads  up 
to  the  chief  Alpine  passes.  The  coincidence  of  the  Roman 
and  medieval  roads  over  the  Alps  with  the  modern  railroads  is 
striking,  except  in  the  single  point  of  elevation.  Railroads 
tend  to  follow  lower  levels.  Modern  engineering  skill  enables 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        549 

them  to  tunnel  the  crest,  to  cut  galleries  in  the  perpendicular 
walls  of  gorges,  and  to  embank  mountain  torrents  against 
the  spring  inundation  of  the  roadbed,  where  it  drops  to  the 
valley  floor. 

Where  gaps  are  low  and  the  approaching  waters  are  Navigable 
navigable,  at  least  for  the  small  craft  of  early  days,  they  Tive^  *P- 
combine  to  enhance  the  historical  importance  of  their  routes.  Proac^es 
The  Mohawk  River,  navigable  for  the  canoe  of  Indian  and 
fur  trader,  greatly  increased  travel  and  traffic  through 
the  Mohawk  depression.  The  Pass  of  Belfort  is  the  greatest 
historic  gateway  of  western  Europe,  chiefly  because  it  unites 
the  channels  of  the  Rhone,  Saone  and  Rhine.  Lake  Lucerne 
brings  the  modern  tourist  by  boat  to  the  foot  of  the  railroad 
ascent  to  the  St.  Gotthard  Pass,  as  the  long  gorge  of  Lake 
Maggiore  receives  him  at  the  southern  end.  Lake  Maggiore 
is  the  water  outlet  also  of  the  Simplon  Pass  from  the  upper 
Rhone,  the  Lukmanier  (6288  feet  or  1917  meters)  from  the 
Hither  Rhine,  and  the  San  Bernadino  (6766  feet  or  2063 
meters)  from  the  Hinter  Rhine.50  This  geographical  fact 
explains  the  motive  of  Swiss  expansion  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury in  embracing  the  Italian  province  of  Ticino  and  the 
upper  end  of  Lake  Maggiore.  A  significance  like  that  of 
the  Swiss  and  Italian  lakes  for  the  Alpine  passes  appears 
emphasized  in  the  Sogne  Fiord  of  Norway.  This  carries  a 
marine  highway  a  hundred  miles  into  the  land ;  from  its 
head,  roads  ascend  to  the  only  two  dents  in  the  mountain  wall 
south  of  the  wide  snowfield  of  the  Jotun  Fjcld,  and  they 
lead  thence  by  the  valleys  of  Hallingdal  and  Valders  down  to 
the  plains  of  Christiania. 

Genuine  mountain  passes  have  only  emergency  inhabitants  Types  of 
— the  monks  and  dogs  of  the  hospice,  the  road-keepers  in  settlements 
their  refuge  huts  or  cantoniere,   or  the  garrison  of  a  fort 
guarding  these  important  thoroughfares.     The  flanking  val-  proaches. 
leys  of  approach  draw  to  themselves  the  human  life  of  the 
mountains.     Their  upper  settlements  show  a  certain  common 
physiognomy,  born  of  their  relation  to   the  barren  transit 
region    above,    except   in    those    few    mountain    districts    of 
advanced     civilization     where     railroads     have     introduced 
through  traffic  over  the  barrier.     At  the  foot  of  the  final 


550        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 

ascent  to  the  pass,  where  often  the  carriage  road  ends  and 
where  mule-path  or  foot-trail  begins,  is  located  a  settlement 
that  lives  largely  by  the  transmontane  travel.  It  is  a  place 
of  inns,  hostelries,  of  blacksmith  shops,  where  in  the  busy 
season  the  sound  of  hammer  and  anvil  is  heard  all  night;  of 
stables  and  corrals  crowded  with  pack  and  draft  animals; 
of  storehouses  where  the  traveler  can  provide  himself  with 
food  for  the  journey  across  the  barren,  uninhabited  heights. 
It  is  the  typical  outfitting  point  such  as  springs  up  on  the 
margin  of  any  pure  transit  region,  whether  mountain  or 
desert.  Such  places  are  Andcrmatt  and  Airolo,  lying  at  an 
altitude  of  4000  feet  or  more  on  the  St.  Gotthard  road,  St. 
Moritz  below  the  Maloja  Pass,  Jaca  near  the  Pass  de  Canfranc 
over  the  Pyrenees,  Kugiar  and  Shahidula51  at  an  elevation 
of  10,775  feet  or  3285  meters  on  the  road  up  to  the  Karako- 
rum  Pass  (18,54)8  feet  or  5655  meters),  which  crosses  the 
highest  range  of  the  Himalayas  between  Leh  in  the  upper 
Indus  Valley  and  Yarkand  in  Chinese  Turkestan. 

Lower  Farther  down  the  transverse  valley  the  type  of  settlement 

settle-  changes  where  side  valleys,  leading  down  from  other  passes, 

converge  and  help  build  up  a  distributing  center  for  a  con- 
siderable highland  area.  Such  a  point  is  Chiavenna  in 
northern  Italy,  located  above  the  head  of  Lake  Como  at  the 
junction  of  the  Mera  and  Liro  valleys,  which  lead  respec- 
tively to  the  Spliigen  and  Maloja  passes.  It  lies  at  an  alti- 
tude of  1090  feet  (332  meters)  and  has  a  population  of 
4000.  Such  a  point  is  Aosta  (1913  feet  or  583  meters 
elevation)  in  the  Dora  Baltea  Valley,  commanding  the  Italian 
approaches  to  the  Great  St.  Bernard  Pass,  and  the  less  im- 
portant Col  de  Fenetre  leading  to  the  upper  Rhone,  the 
Little  St.  Bernard  highway  to  the  valley  of  the  Isere,  and 
Col  de  la  Seigne  path  around  the  Mont  Blanc  range  to  the 
valley  of  the  Arve.  Aosta  was  an  important  place  in  the 
Roman  period  and  has  to-day  a  population  of  about  8000. 
Kokan,  in  the  upper  Sir-Daria  Valley  in  Russian  Turkestan, 
commands  the  approach  to  the  passes  of  the  western  Tian 
Shan  and  the  northern  Pamir.  Its  well-stocked  bazaars,  con- 
taining goods  from  Russia,  Persia  and  India,  testify  to  its 
commercial  location. 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        551 

When  the  highland  area  is  very  broad  and  therefore  neces-  Pass  cities 
sitates   long   transit  journeys,   genuine   pass   cities   develop  and  their 
at  high  altitudes,  and  become  the  termini  of  the  transmontane  marljct8. 
trade.     Such  is  the  Leh  (11,280  feet  or  3439  meters)  on  the 
caravan  route  from  Central  Asia  over  the  Karakorum  Pass 
down  to  Kashmir,  and  such  is  Srinagar  (5252  feet  or  1603 
meters)  in  Kashmir.     To  their  markets  come  caravans  from 
Chinese  Turkestan,  laden  with  carpets  and  brick  tea,  and 
Tibetan  merchants  from  Lhassa,  bringing  wool  from  their 
highland  pastures  to  exchange  for  the  rice  and  sugar  of  low- 
land India.52     Leh  is  conveniently  situated  about  half  way 
between  the  markets  of  India  and  Central  Asia.     Therefore 
it  is  the  terminus  for  caravans  arriving  from  both  regions,  and 
exchange  place  for  products  from  north  and  south.     Seldom 
do  caravans  from  either  direction  go  farther  than  this  point. 
Here  the  merchants  rest  for  a  month  or  two  and  barter  their 
goods.     Tents  of  every  kind,  camels,  yaks,  mules  and  horses, 
coolie  transports  of  various  races,  men  of  many  languages 
and  many  religions,  give  to  this  high-laid  town  a  truly  cosmo- 
politan stamp  in  the  summer  time  when  the  passes  are  open.53 
Kabul,  which  lies  at  an  altitude  of  nearly  6000  feet  near  the 
head  of  the  Kabul  River,  is  the  focus  of  numerous  routes 
over  the  Hindu  Kush,  and  dominates  all  routes  converging 
on  the  northwest  frontier  of  the  Punjab.54     It  is  therefore 
the    military    and    commercial    key    to    India.      Its    narrow 
winding  streets  are  obstructed  by  the  picturesque  kafilas  of 
Oriental  merchants,  stocked  with  both  Russian  goods  from  the 
Oxus  districts  and  British  goods  from  India  in  evidence  of 
its  intermediary  location.55 

Occasionally  a  very  high  market  develops  for  purely  local 
use.  The  Indian  Himalayan  province  of  Kumaon  contains 
the  market  town  of  Garbyang,  at  an  elevation  of  10,300  feet 
or  about  3000  meters,  on  the  Kali  River  road  leading  by 
the  Lipu  Lekh  Pass  (16,780  feet  or  5115  meters)  over  to 
Tibet.  It  has  grown  up  as  a  trade  center  for  the  Dokpa 
Tibetans,  who  will  not  descend  below  10,000  feet  because  their 
yak  and  sheep  die  at  a  lower  altitude.56  Farther  east  in  the 
Sikkim  border,  Darjeeling  (7150  feet  or  2180  meters  eleva- 
tion) is  center  of  the  British  wool  trade  with  Tibet. 


552        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 

Often  the  exchange  point  moves  nearer  the  summit  of  the 
pass,  dividing  the  journey  more  equally  between  the  two 
areas  of  production.  Here  develops  the  temporar}'  summer 
market.  High  up  on  the  route  between  Leh  and  Yarkand  is 
Sasar,  a  place  of  unroofed  enclosures  for  the  deposit  of  cotton, 
silk  and  other  goods  left  there  by  the  caravans  plying  back 
and  forth  between  Lch  and  Sasar,  or  Sasar  and  Yarkand.57 
Nearly  midway  on  the  much  frequented  trade  route  between 
Leh  and  Lhassa,  at  a  point  15,100  feet  (nearly  500  meters) 
above  sea  level,  just  below  the  Schako  Pass,  lies  Gartok  in 
western  Tibet,  in  summer  a  busy  market  surrounded  by  a 
city  of  tents,  and  the  summer  residence  of  the  two  Chinese 
viceroys,  who  occupy  the  only  two  substantial  dwellings  in 
the  place.  Here  at  the  end  of  August  is  held  a  great  annual 
fair,  which  is  attended  by  traders  from  India,  Kashmir, 
Mongolia,  Chinese  Turkestan,  China  proper,  and  Lhassa; 
but  by  November  the  place  is  deserted.  The  traders  disperse, 
and  the  few  residents  of  Gartok,  together  with  the  viceroys, 
retire  down  the  Indus  Valley  to  the  more  sheltered  village  of 
Gargunza  (14,140  feet  or  4311  meters  elevation),  which 
represents  the  limits  of  permanent  settlement  in  these  alti- 
tudes.58 The  Sutlej  Valley  route  from  the  Punjab  to  Lhassa 
is  capped  near  its  summit  at  an  altitude  of  about  5000  meters 
by  the  summer  market  of  Gyanema,  whose  numerous  types 
of  tents  indicate  the  various  homes  of  the  traders  from 
Lhassa  to  India.59 

Pass  Natural  thoroughfares,  whether  river  highways  or  mountain 

peoples.  pass  routes,  draw  to  themselves  migration,  travel,  trade  and 
war.  They  therefore  early  assume  historical  importance. 
Hence  we  find  that  peoples  controlling  transmontane  routes 
have  always  been  able  to  exert  an  historical  influence  out 
of  proportion  to  their  size  and  strength;  and  that  in  conse- 
quence they  early  become  an  object  of  conquest  to  the  people 
of  the  lowlands,  as  soon  as  these  desire  to  control  such  transit 
routes.  The  power  of  these  pass  tribes  is  often  due  to  the 
trade  which  they  command  and  which  compensates  them  for 
the  unproductive  character  of  their  country.  In  the  eastern 
Himalayas  the  Tomos  of  the  Chumbi  Valley  are  intermediaries 
of  trade  between  Darjeeling  and  Tibet.  In  the  western 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        553 

Himalayas,  the  Kumaon  borderland  of  northern  India,  which 
commands  some  of  the  best  passes,  has  made  its  native  folk 
or  Bhutias  bold  merchants  who  jealously  monopolize  the 
trade  over  the  passes  to  the  Tibetan  markets.  They  stretch 
for  a  zone  of  thirty  miles  south  of  the  boundary  from  Nepal 
to  Garhwal  along  the  approach  to  every  pass,  each  sub-group 
having  its  particular  trade  route.60 

It  is  always  possible  for  such  pass  tribes  to  levy  a  toll  or  Transit 
transit  duty  on  merchandise,  or  in  lieu  of  this  to  rob.  Caesar  duties, 
made  war  upon  the  Veragri  and  Seduni,  who  commanded  the 
northern  end  of  the  Great  St.  Bernard  Pass,  in  order  to 
open  up  the  road  over  the  Alps,  which  was  traversed  by  Roman 
merchants  magno  cum  periculo  magnisque  cum  portoriis.61 
The  Salassi,  who  inhabited  the  upper  Dora  Baltea  Valley  and 
hence  controlled  the  Little  St.  Bernard  wagon  road  leading 
over  to  Lugdunum  or  Lyons,  regularly  plundered  or  taxed 
all  who  attempted  to  cross  their  mountains.  On  one  occasion 
they  levied  a  toll  of  a  drachm  per  man  on  a  Roman  army,  and 
on  another  plundered  the  treasure  of  Caesar  himself.  After  a 
protracted  struggle  they  were  crushed  by  Augustus,  who 
founded  Aosta  and  garrisoned  it  with  a  body  of  Praetorian 
cohorts  to  police  the  highway.62  The  lapodes  in  the  Julian 
Alps  controlled  the  Mount  Ocra  or  Peartree  Pass,  which  car- 
ried the  Roman  wagon  road  from  Aquileia  over  the  mountains 
down  to  the  valley  of  the  Laibach  and  the  Save.  This  strat- 
egic position  they  exploited  to  the  utmost,  till  Augustus 
brought  them  to  subjection  as  a  preliminary  to  Roman  expan- 
sion on  the  Danube.63 

Turning  to  another  part  of  the  world,  we  find  that  the 
Afghan  tribes  commanding  the  passes  of  the  Suleiman  Moun- 
tains have  long  been  accustomed  to  impose  transit  duties  upon 
caravans  plying  between  Turkestan  and  India.  The 
merchants  have  regularly  organized  themselves  into  bands  of 
hundreds  or  even  thousands  to  resist  attack  or  exorbitant 
exactions.  The  Afghans  have  always  enforced  their  right  to 
collect  tolls  in  the  Khaibar  and  Kohat  passes,  and  have  thus 
blackmailed  every  Indian  dynasty  for  centuries.  In  1881 
the  British  government  came  to  terms  with  them  by  paying 
them  an  annual  sum  to  keep  these  roads  open.64  Just  to  the 


554        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 


Strategic 
power 
of  pass 

states. 


south  the  Gomal  Pass,  which  carries  the  main  traffic  road 
over  the  border  mountains  between  the  Punjab  and  the  Afghan 
city  of  Ghazni,  is  held  by  the  brigand  tribe  of  Waziris,  and  is 
a  dangerous  gauntlet  to  be  run  by  every  armed  caravan  pass- 
ing to  and  from  India.85  The  Ossetes  of  the  Caucasus,  who 
occupy  the  Pass  of  Dariel  and  the  approaching  valleys, 
regularly  preyed  upon  the  traffic  moving  between  Russia  and 
Georgia,  till  the  Muscovite  government  seized  and  policed 
the  road.66 

The  strategic  importance  of  pass  peoples  tends  early  to 
assume  a  political  aspect.  The  mountain  state  learns  to  ex- 
ploit this  one  advantage  of  its  ill-favored  geographical  loca- 
tion. The  cradle  of  the  old  Savoyard  power  in  the  late 
Middle  Ages  lay  in  the  Alpine  lands  between  Lake  Geneva 
and  the  western  tributaries  of  the  Po  River.  This  location 
controlling  several  great  mountain  routes  between  France 
and  Italy  gave  the  Savoyard  princes  their  first  importance.67 
The  autonomy  of  Switzerland  can  be  traced  not  less  to  the 
citadel  character  of  the  country  and  the  native  independence 
of  its  people,  than  to  their  political  exploitation  of  their 
strategic  position.  They  profited,  moreover,  by  the  wish  of 
their  neighbors  that  such  an  important  transit  region  between 
semi-tropical  and  temperate  Europe  should  be  held  by  a  power 
too  weak  to  obstruct  its  routes.  The  Amir  of  Kabul,  backed 
by  the  rapacious  Afridi  tribes  of  the  Suleiman  Mountains, 
has  been  able  to  play  off  British  India  against  Russia,  and 
thereby  to  secure  from  both  powers  a  degree  of  consideration 
not  usually  shown  to  inferior  nations.  Similarly  in  colonial 
America,  the  Iroquois  of  the  Mohawk  depression,  who  com- 
manded the  passway  from  the  Hudson  to  the  fur  fields  of 
the  Northwest  and  also  the  avenue  of  attack  upon  the  New 
York  settlements  for  the  French  in  Canada,  were  early  con- 
ciliated by  the  English  and  used  by  them  as  allies,  first  in 
the  French  wars  and  afterward  in  the  Revolution. 


NOTES   TO    CHAPTER   XV 


1.  For  physical  effects,  see  Angelo  Mosso,  Life  of  Man  on  the  High 
Alps.     Translated  from  the  Italian.     London,  1898. 

2.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  463-465.     New  York,  1899. 


MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES        555 

3.  Strabo,  Book  IV,  chap.  VI,  3. 

4.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Eaces  of  Europe,  pp.  31-32.     New  York,  1899. 

5.  Sir  Thomas  Holdich,  India,  pp.  32-33.     London,  1905. 

6.  W.  Z.  Kipley,  The  Kaces  of  Europe,  Map  p.  439.     New  York,  1899. 

7.  Imperial  Gazetteer  of  India,  Vol.  I,  pp.  294-295.    Oxford,  1907.    Sir 
Thomas  Holdich,  India,  relief  map  on  p.   171  compared  with  linguistic 
map  p.  201.     London,  1905. 

8.  Census  of  India  for   1901,  Kisley  and  Gait,  Vol.  I,  Part  I,  p.   2. 
Calcutta,  1903.    B.  H.  Baden-Powell,  The  Indian  Village  Community,  pp. 
40,  130,  131.    London,  1896. 

9.  Count   Gleichen,   The  Egyptian   Sudan,  Vol.   I,  pp.   184,   185,   190. 
London,  1905. 

10.  Gustav  Nachtigal,  Sahara  und  Sudan,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  178,  188-192. 
Leipzig,  1889. 

11.  Spencer  and  Gillen,  The  Northern  Tribes  of  Central  Australia,  pp. 
6,  13.     London,  1904. 

12.  W.  Deecke,  Italy,  p.  365.     London,  1904. 

13.  Sir  Thomas  Holdich,  India,  pp.   295-296.     London,  1905.     G.  W. 
Steevens,  In  India,  pp.  202-204.     New  York,  1899. 

14.  Francis  Younghusband,  The  Heart  of  a  Continent,  pp.   138,  140, 
145,  272-273.     London,  1904. 

15.  E.  Huntington,  The  Pulse  of  Asia,  p.  87.     Boston,  1907. 

16.  E.  C.  Semple,  American  History  and  Its  Geographic  Conditions,  pp. 
184-185.     Boston,  1903. 

17.  Isabella  Bird  Bishop,  The  Yangtze  Valley  and  Beyond,  Vol.  II,  pp. 
70-72,  88,  91.     London,  1900. 

18.  Francis  H.   Nichols,   Through  Hidden  Shensi,  pp.  170-171.     New 
York,  1902. 

19.  Otis  T.  Mason,  Primitive  Travel  and  Transportation,  pp.  450-454, 
474-475.     Smithsonian  Report,  Washington,  1896. 

20.  Col.   George   E.   Church,   The  Acre   Territory  and  the  Caoutchouc 
Regions  of  Southwestern  Amazonia,  Geog.  Jour.  May,  1904.     London. 

21.  M.   Hue,  Journey  through  the   Chinese   Empire,  pp.   39-40.     New 
York,  1871. 

22.  Perceval  Landon,  The  Opening  of  Tibet,  pp.  54-55.     New  York, 
1905. 

23.  Jean  Baptiste  Tavernier,  Travels  in  India.    Vol.  II,  p.  264.    Trans- 
lated from  the  French  of  1676.     London,  1889. 

24.  E.  F.  Knight,  Where  Three  Empires  Meet,  pp.  231,  274,  276,  286- 
289.     London,  1897. 

25.  Census  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  Vol.  I,  p.  544.    Washington,  1905. 

26.  Joseph  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  p.  134.     London,  1903. 

27.  M.   S.   W.   Jefferson,   Caesar   and  the   Central   Plateau   of   France, 
Journal  of  Geog.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  113.    New  York,  1897. 

28.  P.  Vidal  de  la  Blache,  Tableau  de  la  Geographic  de  la  France,  p. 
276.     Paris,   1903. 

29.  E.  A.  Freeman,  Historical  Geography  of  Europe,  Vol.  I,  p.  450-453. 
London,   1882. 

30.  William  Morris  Davis,  Physical  Geography,  p.  183.     Boston,  1899. 

31.  P.  Vidal  de  la  Blache,  Tableau  de  la  Geographic  de  la  France,  p. 
260,  map  p.  261.     Paris,  1903. 


556        MOUNTAIN  BARRIERS  AND  PASSES 

32.  Indian  Census  for  1901,  Eisley  and  Gait,  Vol.  I,  Part  I,  pp.  1,  2. 
Calcutta,  1903. 

33.  Hans  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  IV,  p.  479.    New  York, 
1902. 

34.  Sir    Thomas    Holdich,   India,   p.    67,   cartogram    of   Hindu    Kus'i 
orography.     London,  1905. 

35.  Ibid.,  pp.  102-104. 

36.  Ibid.,  p.  26. 

37.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  p.  27.    London,  1903. 

38.  B.  H.  Baden-Powell,  The  Indian  Village  Community,  pp.  40-45,  111. 
116.     London,  1896. 

39.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  pp.  394-395.    New  York,  1902. 

40.  Gottfried  Merzbacher,  Aus  den  Hochregionen  des  Kaukasus,  pp.  73- 
78.     Leipzig,  1901. 

41.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  The  Races  of  Europe,  p.  438.    New  York,  1899. 

42.  Ibid.,  Maps  pp.  143,  147,  text  p.  148. 

43.  E.  Huntington,  The  Pulse  of  Asia,  pp.  106-109.     Boston,  1907. 

44.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  The  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  249-253.     New  York,  1«99. 

45.  Ibid.,  p.  282  and  cartogram,  p.  284. 

46.  Sir    Thomas    Holdieh,    India,    p.    201.      London,    1905.      Imperial 
Gazetteer  of  India,  Vol.  I,  p.  295.     Oxford,  1907. 

47.  Census  of  India,  1901,  Ethnographic  Appendices,  Vol.  I,  p.  60.  by 
H.  H.  Risley,  Calcutta,  1903.     C.  A.  Sherring,  Western  Tibet  and  the 
British  Borderland,  pp.  341-353.     London,  1906. 

48.  E.  Lavisse,  Histoire  de  France,  Vol.  II,  Part  1,  p.  294.    Paris,  1903. 

49.  George  Adam  Smith.  Historical  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,  pp. 
383,  384,  391-400,  407,  409.     New  York,  1897. 

50.  Wilhelm  Deecke,  Italy,  pp.  20,  21.     London,  1904. 

51.  Francis  Younghusband,  The  Heart  of  a  Continent,  pp.   150,  194, 
199.     London,  1904. 

52.  E.  F.  Knight,  Where  Three  Empires  Meet,  pp.  12,  88,  157-159,  231. 
London,  1897. 

53.  Ibid.,  pp.  173,  177. 

54.  Sir  Thomas  Holdich,  India,  map  p.  85,  pp.  86,  89.     London,  1905. 

55.  Vambery,  Seise  in  Mittelasien,  pp.  371-375.    Leipzig,  1973. 

56.  C.  A.  Sherring,  Western  Tibet  and  the  British  Borderland,  p.  136. 
London,  1906. 

57.  O.  P.  Crosby,  Tibet  and  Turkpstnn,  pp.  112-116.     New  York,  1903. 

58.  Elisee  Reclus,  Asia,  Vol.  II,  pp.  50-51.     C.  A  Sherring,  Western 
Tibet  and  the  British  Borderland,  pp.  146-148,  152,  157,  300-303.  London, 
1906. 

59.  Ibid.,  pp.  326-327. 

60.  Ibid.,  pp.  4,  61-64,  310-311. 

61.  Bella  Gallico,  Book  III,  chap.  I. 

62.  Strabo,  Book  IV,  chap.  VI,  7,  11. 
^63.  Strabo,  Book  TV.  chap.  VI,  10. 

64.  Sir  Thomas  Holdich,  The  Indian  Borderland,  p.  48.    London,  1900. 

65.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  467.     New  York,  1902. 

66.  Pallas,  Travels  Through  the  Southern  Provinces  of  Russia,  Vol.  I. 
p.  431.     London,  1812. 

67.  E.  A.  Freeman,  Historical  Geography  of  Europe,  Vol.  I,  pp.  2.86-287, 
London,  1882. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
INFLUENCES  OF  A  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 

THERE  are  zones  of  latitude  and  zones  of  altitude.  To  Zones  of 
every  mountain  region  both  these  pertain,  resulting  in  a  nice  altltude- 
interplay  of  geographic  factors.  Every  mountain  slope  from 
summit  to  piedmont  is,  from  the  anthropo-geographical  stand- 
point, a  complex  phenomenon.  When  high  enough,  it  may 
show  a  graded  series  of  contrasted  complementary  locations, 
closely  interdependent  grouping  of  populations  and  employ- 
ments, every  degree  of  density  from  congestion  to  vacancy, 
every  range  of  cultural  development  from  industrialism  to 
nomadism.  The  southern  slope  of  the  Monte  Rosa  Alps, 
from  the  glacier  cap  at  4500  meters  to  the  banks  of  the  Po 
River,  yields  within  certain  limits  a  zonal  epitome  of  European 
life  from  Lapland  to  the  Mediterranean.  The  long  incline 
from  the  summit  of  Mount  Everest  (8840  meters)  in  the 
eastern  Himalayas,  through  Darjeeling  down  to  sea  level  at 
Calcutta,  comprises  in  a  few  miles  the  climatic  and  cultural 
range  of  Asia  from  Arctic  to  Tropic. 

For  the  state,  a  territory  of  varied  relief  is  highly  benefi-  Politico- 
cial,  because  it  combines  manifold  forms  of  economic  activity,  w 
a  wide  range  of  crops,  areas  of  specialized  production  mutual-  var-ie^  Te^ 
ly  interdependent.     It  induces  a  certain  balance  of  urban  and  Hgf. 
rural   life,   which   contributes   greatly   to   the   health   of  the 
state.1     The  steep  slopes  of  Dai  Nippon,  fertile  only  under 
spade  tillage,  will  forever  insure  Japan  the  persistence  of  a 
numerous     peasantry.       For    geological     and     geographical 
reasons,  as  from  national  motives,  therefore,  Japan  will  prob- 
ably never  sacrifice  its  farmer  to  its  industrial  class,  as  Eng- 
land has  done.     On  the  other  hand,  contrasted  reliefs  on  a 
great   territorial   scale  tend     to   invade   political   solidarity. 
Tidewater  and  mountain  Virginia  were  poor  running-mates 
for  a  century  before  the  Civil  War,  and  then  the  mountain 
region  broke  out  of  harness.    Geographical  contrasts  made  the 


558  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Relief  and 
climate. 


Altitude 
zones  of 
economic 
and  cultural 
develop- 
ment 


unification  of  Germany  difficult,  and  yet  they  have  added  to 
the  economic  and  national  strength  of  the  Empire.  The 
history  of  Switzerland  shows  the  high  Alpine  cantons  always 
maintaining  a  political  tug  of  war  with  the  cantons  of  the 
marginal  plain,  and  always  suffering  a  defeat  which  was  their 
salvation. 

The  chief  effect  of  a  varied  relief  is  a  varied  climate.  This 
changes  with  altitude  in  much  the  same  way  as  with  latitude. 
Heat  and  absolute  humidity  diminish,  generally  speaking, 
as  height  increases,  while  rainfall  becomes  greater  up  to  a 
certain  level.  The  effect  of  ascending  and  descending  cur- 
rents of  air  is  to  diminish  the  range  of  temperature  on  moun- 
tain slopes  and  produce  rather  an  oceanic  type  of  climate. 
The  larger  and  more  uniform  a  climatic  district,  the  more 
conspicuously  do  even  slight  elevations  form  climatic  islands, 
like  the  Harz  Mountains  in  the  North  German  lowlands.  A 
land  of  monotonous  relief  has  a  uniform  climate,  while  a  region 
rich  in  vertical  articulations  is  rich  also  in  local  varieties  of 
climate.2  A  highland  of  considerable  elevation  forms  a  cold 
district  in  the  Temperate  Zone,  a  temperate  one  in  the  Tropics, 
and  a  moist  one  in  a  desert  or  steppe.  Especially  in  arid  and 
torrid  belts  does  the  value  of  elevation  for  human  life  increase. 

The  highlands  of  Mexico,  South  America  and  the  Himala- 
yan rim  of  India  show  stratified  zones  of  tropical,  temperate, 
and  arctic  climate,  to  which  plant,  animal  and  human  life  con- 
form. The  response  is  conspicuous  in  the  varying  density 
of  population  in  the  successive  altitude  zones.  Central  Asia 
shows  a  threefold  cultural  stratification  of  its  population, 
each  attended  by  the  appropriate  density,  according  to  loca- 
tion in  steppe,  piedmont  and  mountain.  The  steppes  have 
their  scattered  pastoral  nomads ;  the  piedmonts,  with  their  ir- 
rigation streams,  support  sedentary  agricultural  peoples,  con- 
centrated at  focal  points  in  commercial  and  industrial  towns ; 
the  higher  reaches  of  the  mountains  are  occupied  by  sparse 
groups  of  peasants  and  shepherds,  wringing  from  upland 
pasture  and  scant  field  a  miserable  subsistence.  The  same 
stratification  appears  in  the  Atlas  Mountains,  intensified  on 
the  southern  slope  by  the  contrast  between  the  closely  popu- 
lated belt  of  the  piedmont  and  the  wandering  Tuareg  tribes 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  559 

of  the  Sahara  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  sparse  Berber  settle- 
ments of  the  Atlas  highlands  on  the  other.  The  long  slope 
of  Mount  Kilimanjaro  in  German  East  Africa  descends  to  a 
coastal  belt  of  steppe  and  desert,  inhabited  by  Swahili  cattle- 
breeders.  Its  piedmont,  from  1000  feet  above  the  plain  up  to 
2400  feet,  constitutes  a  zone  of  rich  irrigated  plantations 
and  gardens,  densely  populated  by  peaceful  folk  of  mingled 
Bantu  and  Hamitic  blood.  At  6000  feet,  where  forests  cease, 
are  found  the  kraals,  cattle,  sheep  and  goats  of  the  semi- 
nomadic  Masai  of  doubtful  Hamitic  stock,  who  raid  the  coastal 
lowlands  for  cattle,  and  purchase  all  their  vegetable  food  from 
the  tillage  belt.3  [See  maps  page  105  and  487.] 

This  stratification  assumes  marked  variations  in  the  dif- 
ferent geographical  zones.      In  Greenland  life  is  restricted 


Average  density  in  Italy,  300  to  sq  m 
Cities  of  over  500,000  inhabitants 
Hnclrr  100  to  .sq   in 
100-200  to  sq.  m. 
200-375  to  sq.  m. 
375-500  to  sq.  m. 


DENSITY  OF  POPULATION  IN  ITALY. 


560  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Altitude 
and  density 
belts  In 
tropical 

highlands. 


to  the  piedmont  coastal  belt ;  above  this  rises  the  desert 
waste  of  the  ice  fields.  Norway  shows  a  tide- washed  piedmont, 
containing  a  large  majority  of  the  population;  above  this,  a 
steep  slope  sparsely  inhabited;  and  higher  still,  a  wild  plateau 
summit  occupied  in  summer  only  by  grazing  herds  or  migrant 
reindeer  Lapps.  Farther  south  the  Alps  show  successive  tiers 
of  rural  economy,  again  with  their  appropriate  density  of 
settlement.  On  their  lower  slope  is  found  the  vineyard  belt, 
a  region  of  highly  intensive  tillage,  large  returns  upon  labor, 
and  hence  of  closely  distributed  settlement.  Above  that  is  the 
zone  of  field  agriculture,  less  productive  and  less  thickly 
peopled.  Higher  still  is  the  wide  zone  of  hay  farming  and 
stock-raising,  supporting  a  sparse,  semi-nomadic  population 
and  characterized  by  villages  which  diminish  with  the  altitude 
and  cease  beyond  2000  meters.  On  Aetna,  located  in  the 
tropical  Mediterranean,  three  girdles  of  altitude  have  long 
been  recognized, — the  girdle  of  agriculture,  the  forest  belt, 
and  the  desert  summit.  But  the  tourist  who  ascends  Aetna, 
passes  from  the  coast  through  a  zone  of  orange  and  lemon 
groves,  which  are  protected  by  temporary  matting  roofs 
against  occasional  frosts;  then  through  vineyards  and  olive 
orchards  which  rise  to  800  meters ;  then  through  a  belt  of 
summer  crops  rising  to  1550  meters,  and  varied  between 
1400  and  1850  meters  elevation  by  stretches  of  chestnut 
groves,  whose  green  expanse  is  broken  here  and  there  by  the 
huts  of  the  forest  guards,  the  highest  tenants  of  the  mountain. 
From  these  lonely  dwellings  down  to  the  sea,  density  of 
population  increases  regularly  to  a  maximum  of  over  385  to 
the  square  mile  (150  to  the  square  kilometer)  near  the  coast. 

In  the  tropical  highlands  of  Mexico,  Central  and  South 
America,  on  the  other  hand,  concentration  of  population  and 
its  concomitant  cultural  development  begin  to  appear  above 
the  2000  meter  line.  Here  are  the  chief  seats  of  population. 
Mexico  has  three  recognized  altitude  zones,  the  cold,  the 
temperate  and  the  hot,  corresponding  to  plateau,  high  slopes 
and  coastal  piedmont  up  to  1000  meters  or  3300  feet;  but 
the  first  two  contain  nine-tenths  of  the  people.  While  the 
plateau  has  in  some  sections  a  population  dense  as  that  of 
France,  the  lowlands  are  sparsely  peopled  by  wild  Indians 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  561 

arid  lumbermen.  Ecuador  has  three-fourths  of  its  population 
crowded  into  the  plateau  basins  (mean  elevation  8000  feet 
or  2500  meters)  enclosed  by  the  ranges  of  the  Andes.  Peru 
presents  a  similar  distribution,  with  a  comparatively  dense 
population  on  a  plateau  reaching  to  11,000  feet  (3500 
meters)  or  more,  though  its  coastal  belt,  being  healthful,  dry, 
and  fairly  well  supplied  with  irrigation  streams  from  the 
Andes,  is  better  developed  than  any  other  similar  district 
in  tropical  America.*  In  Bolivia,  72  per  cent,  of  the  total 
population  live  at  an  altitude  of  6000  to  14,000  feet,  while 
five  out  of  the  nine  most  densely  peopled  provinces  lie  at 
elevations  over  11,000  feet.5  [See  map  page  9.] 

From  Mexico  to  central  Chile,  the  heavy  rains  from  the 
trade-winds  clothe  the  slopes  with  dense  forests,  except  on  the 
lee  side  of  the  high  Andean  wall  of  Peru  and  Chile,  and 
reduce  much  of  the  piedmont  to  malarial  swamp  and 
jungle.  The  discouragement  to  primitive  tillage  found  in 
the  unequal  fight  with  a  tropical  forest,  the  dryer,  more 
bracing  and  healthful  climate  of  the  high  intermontane 
basins,  their  favorable  conditions  for  agriculture  by  irrigation, 
and  their  naturally  defined  location  stimulating  to  early 
cultural  development,  all  combined  to  concentrate  the  popu- 
lation of  prehistoric  America  upon  the  high  valleys  and 
plateaus.  In  historic  times  these  centers  have  persisted,  be- 
cause the  civilized  or  semi-civilized  districts  could  be  best  ex- 
ploited by  the  Spanish  conquerors  and  especially  because  they 
yielded  rich  mineral  wealth.  Furthermore,  the  white  popula- 
tion which  has  subsequently  invaded  tropical  America  has  to  a 
predominant  degree  reinforced  the  native  plateau  populations, 
while  the  imported  negroes  and  mulattoes  have  sought  the 
more  congenial  climatic  conditions  found  in  the  hot  lowlands. 

The    relativity    of    geographical    advantages    in    different  Increasing 
historical  periods  warns  us  against  assuming  in  all  times  a  ^Cn8^7 
sparsity  of  population  in  mountains,  even  when  the  adjoining  ™ 
lowlands  offer  many  attractions  of  climate  and  soil.     In  ages  protection 
of  incessant  warfare,  when  the  motive  of  safety  has  strongly 
influenced    distribution    of    population,    protected    mountain 
sites  have  attracted  settlement  from  the  exposed  plains,  and 
thus  increased  the  relative  density  of  population  on  the  steep 


562  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Motive 
of  pro- 
tection 
in  primitive 
peoples. 


slopes.  The  corrugated  plateau  of  Armenia  and  Kurdistan, 
located  on  the  uneasy  political  frontier  of  Russia,  Persia  and 
Asiatic  Turkey,  exposed  for  centuries  to  nomadic  invasion 
from  the  east,  shows  a  sparser  population  on  its  broad  inter- 
montane  plains  than  on  the  surrounding  ranges.  Security 
makes  the  latter  the  choicer  places  of  residence.  Hence  they 
are  held  by  the  overbearing  and  marauding  Kurds,  late-comers 
into  the  land,  while  the  older  and  numerically  weaker  Armeni- 
ans cower  down  on  the  lower  levels.6  Here  is  an  inversion  of 
the  usual  order.  The  militantly  stronger  intruders,  with  no 
taste  for  agriculture,  have  seized  the  safer  and  commanding 
position  on  the  hills,  descending  in  winter  with  their  cattle 
and  horses  to  pasture  and  prey  upon  field  and  granary  of  the 
valley  folk,  whose  better  soil  is  a  questionable  advantage. 

Instances  of  this  sort,  rare  in  modern  times,  because  of 
general  economic  and  social  progress,  multiply  when  we  go 
into  the  history  of  primitive  or  ancient  peoples.  The  Chero- 
kee Indians  of  the  Southern  Appalachians,  surrounded  by 
powerful  neighbors  in  the  Chickasaws,  Creeks  and  the 
encroaching  whites  of  the  seaboard  colonies,  attacked  by  war 
parties  of  Shawnees  and  Iroquois  from  the  north,  located 
the  bulk  of  their  nation  in  the  mountains.  The  Overhill  and 
Middle  towns,  numbering  together  thirty-three  and  situated 
wholly  in  the  mountains,  comprised  four-fifths  of  their  fight- 
ing force  in  1775,  while  the  nine  towns  distributed  in  the  flat 
lands  of  Georgia  and  South  Carolina  were  small  and  unim- 
portant. The  Indians  themselves  distinguished  these  two 
divisions  of  their  country,  the  one  as  Otarre  or  mountainous, 
and  the  others  as  Ayrate  or  low.7  Similarly  in  ancient  Gaul 
the  three  strongest  tribes,  the  Sequani,  Aedui,  and  Arverni,  all 
had  a  large  mountain  nucleus.  The  Sequani  held  the  Jura 
range  with  part  of  the  Saone  Valley ;  the  Aedui  held  the  north- 
east corner  of  the  Central  Plateau  and  some  lands  on  the 
Saone,  while  the  Arverni  inhabited  the  western  and  central 
portion  of  the  same  highland.  In  a  period  of  constant 
tribal  migrations  and  war,  the  occupants  of  these  high, 
protected  locations  were  better  able  to  defend  themselves,  and 
the}'  maintained  an  adequate  food  supply  by  holding  some  of 
the  adjoining  lowland.  Archaeologists  generally  agree  that  in 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  563 

central  and  southern  Italy  settlement  first  took  place  in  the 
mountains,  gradually  extending  thence  down  into  the  plains. 
The  superiority  of  the  upland  climate,  the  more  abundant 
rainfall,  the  greater  security  against  attack  offered  by  moun- 
tain sites,  and  the  excellent  soil  for  agriculture  resulting  from 
the  geological  make-up  of  the  Apennines,  all  combined  to  draw 
thither  primitive  and  later  settlement.8  [See  map  page  559.] 
Similarly  in  Britain  of  the  Bronze  Age,  before  the  peoples  of 
Aryan  speech  began  to  swarm  over  the  island,  the  primitive 
inhabitants,  involved  in  constant  clan  or  tribal  warfare,  placed 
their  villages  on  the  hills,  and  left  in  the  indestructible  ter- 
races on  their  slopes  the  evidences  of  a  vanished  race  and  an 
outgrown  social  order.9 

The  advance   of   civilization,   which  brought   the   ancient  Geographic 
pirate-ridden  city  from  the  inner  edge  of  the  coastal  zone  c 
down  to  the  wave-washed  strand,  also  drew  the  hill  town  down  density  of 
to  the  plain,  and  the  mountain  population  from  their  inacces-  mountain 
sible  strongholds  to  the  more  accessible  and  productive  valleys,  population. 
These   facts   contain   a   hint.     The    future   investigation   of 
archaeological  remains  in  high  mountain  districts  may  reveal 
at  considerable  elevations  the  oldest  and  hence  lowest  strata  of 
prehistoric  development,  strata  which,  in  the  more  attractive 
valleys,  have  been  obliterated  or  overlaid  by  later  invasions 
of  peoples  and  cultures.     Ignoring  this  temporary  attraction 
of  population   to   protected   mountain   locations   in   ages   of 
persistent  warfare,  we  find  that  a  comparison  of  many  coun- 
tries reveals  a  decreasing  food  supply  and  decreasing  density 
of  population,  with  every  increase  of  height  above  a  certain 
altitude,  except  in  favored  mining  regions  and  in  some  tropical 
lands,   where   better   climatic   conditions    and    freedom    from 
malaria   distribute  settlements    far  above  the   steaming  and 
forest-choked  lowlands.     The  density  of  population  in  moun- 
tains is  influenced  also  by  the  composition  of  the  soil,  which 
affects  its  fertility ;  by  the  grade  and  exposure  of  the  slopes, 
which  determine  the  ease  and  success  of  tillage ;  by  the  proxim- 
ity of  the  highlands  to  teeming  centers  of  lowland  population, 
and  by  the  general  economic  development  of  the  people. 

In  Great  Britain,  the  sparsest  population  is  found  in  the 
sterile    highland    moors    of    Scotland,    where    the   county    of 


564  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 

Sutherland  has  only  11  inhabitants  to  the  square  mile,  Inver- 
ness only  20. 10  These  figures  reveal  also  the  remoteness 
of  a  far  northern  location.  In  the  southern  half  of  the  island 
the  sparsest  populations  are  found  in  the  Welsh  county  of 
Radnor,  with  49  to  the  square  mile,  and  in  English  Westmore- 
land with  85,  both  of  them  mountain  regions,  but  reflecting 
in  their  larger  figures  their  close  proximity  to  the  teeming  in- 
dustrial centers  of  South  Wales  and  Lancashire  respectively. 
In  France  the  most  thinly  settled  departements  are  Basses- 
Alpes  with  43  to  the  square  mile  and  Hautes-Alpes  with  50, 
which  again  owe  even  these  figures  in  part  to  their  situation 
on  the  margin  of  the  densely  populated  valley  of  the  middle 
Rhone.  [See  map  page  559.]  Norway,  almost  wholly  a 
mountain  country,  averages  only  18  souls  to  the  square  mile. 
Less  than  a  thousand  square  miles  of  its  territory  are  under 
cultivation,  and  these  are  distributed  in  small  deltas  at  the 
heads  of  the  fiords,  in  low  strips  here  and  there  along  its  west- 
ern coasts,  or  in  the  openings  of  its  mountain  valleys  to  the 
southeast.  Here  too  is  massed  the  larger  part  of  its  inhabi- 
tants. A  barren  granitic  soil,  unfavorable  zonal  location,  ex- 
cessive rainfall,  paucity  of  level  land,  leaving  the  "upright 
farm"  predominant,  and  remoteness  from  any  thickly  settled 
areas,  together  with  the  resulting  enormous  emigration,  have 
combined  to  keep  down  Norway's  population. 

Sparsity  jf  we  turn  to  Switzerland,  a  country  poor  in  the  resources 

ti  of  its  land  but  rich  in  the  resourcefulness  of  its  people,  we 

the  Alps.  ^n^  a  high  average  density,  218  to  the  square  mile;  but  this 
is  due  to  the  surprising  industrial  development  of  the  marginal 
plains,  which  show  in  the  Canton  of  Geneva  1356  to  the  square 
mile,  and  in  Canton  Zurich  705,  while  the  rugged  upland  of 
Graubiinden  (Grisons)  shows  only  38  to  the  square  mile, 
Uri  only  48,  and  Wallis  (Valais)  only  59.  How  limited  is 
the  food  supply  of  the  country  is  evident  from  the  fact  that 
only  2400  square  miles,  or  fifteen  per  cent,  of  its  area,  can 
be  ranked  as  arable  land,  fit  for  garden,  orchard  or  grain  field, 
while  a  larger  proportion,  or  twenty-eight  per  cent,  is  made 
wholly  useless  by  watercourses,  glaciers,  rock  and  detritus. 
One  half  of  the  entire  country  lies  above  the  region  where 
agriculture  is  possible.  In  the  Cantons  of  Uri  and  Valais, 


more  than  half  the  area  is  absolutely  unproductive,  scarcely 
less  in  the  Grisons,  and  a  third  even  in  sunny  Ticino.11  The 
three  strictly  Alpine  provinces  of  Austria,  Tyrol,  Salzburg 
and  Carinthia,  reproduce  approximately  these  geographic 
conditions.  Nearly  half  of  their  area  is  uninhabited,  and 
only  one-seventh  consists  of  arable  land.  In  consequence 
they  support  only  75  inhabitants  to  the  square  mile,  while 
just  outside  the  mountains,  in  the  piedmont  or  Alpine  fore- 
land, this  density  is  doubled.12  Many  tracts  of  the  Carpa- 
thians, especially  about  the  sources  of  the  Theiss  and  Pruth 
and  the  wooded  mountain  borders  of  Transylvania,  are  among 
the  most  sparsely  inhabited  parts  of  Europe.13  Japan,  ridged 
by  steep  volcanic  ranges,  drenched  by  mountain-born  rains, 
strewn  with  detritus  from  plunging  torrents,  can  cultivate 
only  15.7  per  cent,  of  its  area,  and  is  forced  to  leave  59  per 
cent,  in  forest  reserves.14 

These  figures  tell  of  the  hard  conditions  of  life  character-  Terrace 
istic  of  most  mountain  regions.  Population  under  normal 
circumstances  settles  in  the  narrow  valleys  between  the 
ranges  and  along  the  borders  of  their  drainage  stream.  Soon, 
however,  the  food  suppty  becomes  inadequate  for  the  growing 
numbers,  so  that  artificial  means  have  to  be  employed  to  ex- 
pand the  area  of  arable  land.  The  soil  on  the  mountain 
slopes  is  so  thin  that  it  yields  only  a  scanty  return  to  the 
labor  of  tillage.  Moreover,  under  the  operations  of  plough- 
ing and  harrowing,  it  is  exposed  to  the  danger  of  washing; 
so  that  after  a  few  croppings  the  underlying  rock  of  the 
mountain  side  may  be  laid  bare,  and  all  that  was  valuable 
in  the  quondam  field  deposited  in  the  valley  as  silt  or  swept 
away  to  enrich  the  distant  delta  of  the  nearest  trunk  river. 

To  obviate  this  difficulty  and  to  secure  the  desired  increase 
of  arable  land,  mountain  peoples  the  world  over  have  resorted 
to  terrace  agriculture.  This  means  hand-made  fields.  Par- 
allel walls,  one  above  the  other,  are  constructed  on  horizontal 
lines  across  the  face  of  the  steep  slopes,  and  the  intervals 
between  are  filled  with  earth,  carried  thither  in  baskets  on  the 
peasants'  backs.  The  soil  must  be  constantly  renewed  and 
enriched  by  manure  in  the  same  way,  and  the  masonry  of  the 
retaining  walls  kept  in  repair.  Whenever  possible  these 


566  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Geographi- 
cal distri- 
bution. 


costly  terraced  fields  are  located  by  preference  on  southward 
facing  slopes,  where  the  tilt  of  the  land  makes  the  fields 
catch  the  rays  of  the  sun  almost  at  right  angles  and  thus 
counteracts  the  chill  of  the  higher  altitude,  while  the  mountain 
behind  protects  the  growing  crops  from  cold  northern 
winds.  Good  arable  land,  being  limited  in  amount,  com- 
mands a  high  price;  and  especially  do  choice  terraced  fields 
in  vine-growing  countries,  since  they  make  the  best  vine- 
yards. Such  fields  in  Switzerland  will  bring  from  $300  to 
$2,000  an  acre,  and  are  estimated  to  produce  annually  two 
bottles  of  wine  for  every  square  foot.15 

Terrace  agriculture,  rare  in  new  countries,  in  the  more 
densely  populated  Old  World  is  widely  distributed  in 
mountainous  areas.  In  Germany,  where  it  is  nearly  identical 
with  the  culture  of  the  vine,  it  is  found  along  the  steep  slopes 
overlooking  the  valley  of  the  Moselle  and  the  Rhine;  also  in 
the  Vosges  Mountains,  the  Black  Forest  and  the  Swabian 
Jura,  to  the  limited  altitude  in  which  the  vine  will  flourish  in 
these  northern  regions.  In  the  Alps  it  is  widespread,  and 
not  confined  to  the  culture  of  the  vine.  The  traveler  passing 
along  the  upper  Rhone  through  the  sunny  Canton  of  Valais 
follows  these  terraced  fields  almost  as  far  as  Fiesch  (altitude 
3458  feet),  beyond  which  agriculture  proper  becomes  more 
and  more  restricted  on  account  of  the  elevation,  and  passes 
rapidly  into  the  mere  hay-making  of  a  pastoral  community. 
Between  Leuk  and  Sierre,  not  only  the  mountain  sides,  but 
also  the  steep  gravel  hills  constituting  the  old  terminal  moraine 
deposited  by  the  receding  Rhone  glacier  across  the  valley 
floor,  are  terraced  to  their  very  tops. 

Terrace  cultivation  prevails  in  the  mountains  of  Italy;  it 
is  utilized  not  only  for  the  vine,  but  for  olives,  maize,  oats, 
hemp,  rye  and  flax.  On  the  gentler  declivities  of  the  Apen- 
nines, the  terraced  walls  are  wider  apart  and  lower  than  on 
the  steep  slopes  of  the  Ligurian  Apennines  and  along  the 
Riviera  of  the  Maritime  Alps,  where  the  mountains  rise 
abruptly  from  the  margin  of  the  sea.16  Careful  and  labori- 
ous terrace  cultivation  has  produced  in  Italy  a  class  of  superi- 
or gardeners.  The  Genoese  are  famous  for  their  skill  in  this 
sort  of  culture.  The  men  from  the  Apennine  plateau  of  the 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  567 

Abruzzi    readily   find   positions   in   the   lowlands   as   expert 
gardeners.17 

The  Saracens  of  Spain  in  the  tenth  century  converted  Terrace 
every  mountain  slope  into  a  succession  of  green  terraces.  culture 
They  built  walls  of  heavy  masonry,  and  brought  water,  loam,  g 
and  fertilizing  materials  from  great  distances.  The  slopes  of 
Granada  back  of  Malaga  and  Almeria  were  covered  with  vine- 
yards. Every  foot  of  land  susceptible  of  cultivation  was 
turned  to  account,  every  drop  of  water  from  the  ill-timed 
winter  rains  was  conserved  for  the  growing  season.  The  ap- 
plication of  intelligence  and  labor  to  tillage  enabled  the  His- 
pa no- Arab  provinces  to  support  a  dense  population.18  These 
Saracen  cultivators  had  come  from  the  severest  training 
school  in  all  Eurasia.  Where  the  arid  tableland  of  Arabia  is 
buttressed  on  the  southwestern  front  by  high  coast  ranges 
(6000  to  10,500  feet  or  2000  to  3200  meters)  is  Yemen, 
rich  in  its  soil  of  disintegrated  trap  rock,  adequately  watered 
by  the  dash  of  the  southwest  monsoons  against  its  towering 
ridges;  but  practically  the  whole  country  is  atilt.  Conse- 
quently the  mountains  have  been  terraced  from  the  base  often 
up  to  6000  feet.  The  country  presents  the  aspect  of  vast 
agricultural  amphitheaters,  in  which  the  narrow  paths  of 
ancient  paving  zigzag  up  and  up  through  successive  zones  of 
production.  Here  is  a  wide  range  of  fruits — oranges,  lemons, 
figs,  dates,  bananas  and  coffee;  then  apricots,  apples,  plums, 
grapes,  quinces,  peaches,  together  with  grains  of  various  zonal 
distribution,  such  as  millet,  maize,  wheat  and  barley.  The 
terrace  walls  are  from  five  to  eight  feet  high,  but  toward 
the  top  of  the  mountains  they  often  increase  to  fifteen  feet. 
Though  laid  without  mortar,  they  are  kept  in  perfect  repair. 
Reservoirs  filled  with  water  from  the  two  rainy  seasons,  supply 
the  irrigation  channels.19  In  the  narrow  valleys  of  the  Nejd 
plateau  in  central  Arabia  and  on  the  mountain  slopes  of  Oman 
are  found  the  same  irrigated  gardens  and  terraced  planta- 
tions. This  laborious  tillage  underlay  the  prosperity  of  the 
ancient  Sabaean  monarchy  of  Yemen,  as  it  explains  the  popu- 
lation of  35,000  souls  who  occupy  the  modern  capital  of 
Sanaa,  located  at  an  altitude  of  7600  feet  (2317  meters).20  In  the 

Turning  eastward,  we  find  terrace  agriculture  widely  dis-  Himalayas. 


568  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 

tributed  in  Himalayan  lands.  The  steep  mountain  sides  of 
the  Vale  of  Kashmir  are  cultivated  thus  to  a  considerable 
height.  The  terraces  are  irrigated  by  contour  channels 
constructed  along  the  hillsides,  which  bring  the  water  for  miles 
from  distant  snow-fed  streams.  Their  shelf-like  fields  are 
green  with  fruit  orchards  and  almond  groves,  with  vineyards 
and  grain  fields.21  The  terraced  slopes  about  the  Himalayan 
hill-station  of  Simla  (elevation  7100  to  8000  feet)  feed  the 
summer  population  of  English,  who  there  take  refuge  from 
the  deadly  heat  of  the  plains.  The  mountain  sections  of  the 
native  states  of  Nepal  and  Bhutan  present  the  view  of 
slopes  cut  into  gigantic  stairs,  each  step  a  field  of  waving 
rice  kept  saturated  by  irrigating  streams  from  abundant 
mountain  springs.  Farther  north,  where  Himalayas  and 
Hindu  Kush  meet,  terrace  agriculture  is  combined  with  irriga- 
tion in  the  high  Gilgit  valleys,  and  farther  still  along  that 
mere  gash  running  down  from  the  Pamir  dome,  called  the 
Hunza  Valley.  Here  live  the  once  lawless  robber  tribes  of 
the  Hunzas  and  Nagaris,  whose  conquest  cost  the  British  a 
dangerous  and  expensive  campaign  in  1892,  but  whose  exten- 
sive terraces  of  irrigated  fields  and  evidences  of  skillful  til- 
lage gave  the  whole  country  an  appearance  of  civilization 
strangely  at  variance  with  the  barbarous  character  of  its  in- 
habitants.22 

In  Tibet  North  of  the  outer  Himalayan  range,  near  the  sources  of  the 

and  China.  Indus  and  Sutlej  rivers  in  Ladak  or  Western  Tibet,  this 
same  form  of  cultivation  has  been  resorted  to  by  the  retarded 
and  isolated  Mongolian  inhabitants.  Here  at  an  altitude  of 
11,000  feet  or  more  (3354  meters),  along  mountain  ranges  of 
primitive  rock  yielding  only  a  scant  and  sterile  soil,  terraces 
are  laboriously  constructed;  their  surfaces  are  manured  with 
burnt  remains  of  animal  excrements,  which  must  first  serve 
as  fuel  in  this  timberless  land  before  they  are  applied  to 
the  ground.  In  this  stronghold  of  Buddhism  almost  every 
lamasery  has  its  terraced  fields  yielding  good  crops  of  grain 
and  fruit.23  In  the  densely  populated  Sze  Chuan  province 
of  western  China,  cultivation  has  climbed  from  the  fertile 
basins  of  the  Min  and  upper  Yangtze  rivers  far  up  the 
surrounding  mountains,  where  it  is  carried  on  terraces  to  the 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  569 

foot  of  vertical  cliffs.24  Farther  north  where  the  mountain 
province  of  Shensi  occupies  the  rise  of  land  from  the  Chinese 
lowlands  to  the  central  highlands  of  Asia,  terraces  planted 
with  wheat  or  other  grains  cover  the  mountain  slopes.25 

Terrace  tillage  is  rare  in  new  countries  of  extensive  plains,  In  ancient 
like  the  United  States  and  Canada,  where  the  level  lands  still  Peru- 
suffice  for  the  agricultural  needs  of  the  people;  but  in  the 
confined  mountain  basins  and  valleys  which  made  up  the 
Inca's  territory  in  ancient  Peru,  every  available  natural  field 
was  utilized  for  cultivation,  and  terraces  brought  the  obstinate 
mountain  sides  under  the  dominion  of  the  Andean  peasant. 
They  were  constructed,  a  hundred  or  more  in  number,  rising 
1000  or  1500  feet  above  the  floor  of  the  highland  valley,  con- 
tracting in  width  as  they  rose,  till  the  uppermost  one  was  a 
narrow  shelf  only  two  feet  broad.  These  were  extended  by 
communal  labor  year  after  year,  with  increase  of  population, 
just  as  to-day  in  Java  and  the  neighboring  islands,  and  be- 
came the  property  of  the  Inca.  Streams  from  the  higher 
slopes  were  conducted  in  canals  and  distributed  from  terrace 
to  terrace,  to  irrigate  and  fertilize.  These  terraces  therefore 
yielded  the  best  crops  of  potatoes,  maize  and  pulse.  The 
cultivable  area  was  further  extended  by  floating  gardens,  con- 
sisting of  rafts  covered  with  earth,  which  floated  on  the  surface 
of  lakes.26  They  existed  in  ancient  Mexico  also,27  and  are 
used  to-day  in  the  lakes  and  streams  of  Tibet  and  Kashmir28 
and  the  rivers  of  overcrowded  China. 

Mountainous  islands,  born  of  volcanic  forces  or  the  partial  Terrace 
submergence  of  coastal  ranges,  have  steep  surfaces  and  scant  agnculture 
lowlands.     Their  inhabitants  command  limited  area  at  best. 


Driven  to  agriculture  by  their  isolation,  drawn  to  it  by  the  islands- 
favorable  oceanic  climate,  such  islands  develop  terrace  tillage 
in  its  most  pronounced  form.  On  the  precipitous  pitch  of 
Teneriffe,  every  particle  of  alluvial  soil  is  collected  to  make 
gardens.  Long  lines  of  camels,  laden  with  boxes  of  earth, 
may  be  seen  coming  almost  daily  into  the  town  of  Santa  Cruz, 
bringing  soil  for  the  terraces.29  This  is  desperate  agriculture. 
Irrigated  terraces  scar  the  steep  slopes  of  many  Polynesian 
islands.30  They  are  highly  developed  among  the  Malay  Bat- 
taks  of  Sumatra,  especially  for  rice  culture.31  In  Java,  Bali 


570  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 

and  Lombok  they  reach  a  perfection  hardly  equalled  e>sewhere 
in  the  world.  In  Java  they  begin  at  an  altitude  of  1000  feet, 
cutting  main  and  branch  valleys  into  amphitheaters,  and 
covering  hundreds  of  square  miles.32  On  the  volcanic  slopes 
of  Lombok  the  terrace  plots  vary  from  many  acres  to  a  few 
square  yards,  according  to  the  grade,  while  a  complete  system 
of  irrigation  uses  every  brook  to  water  the  terraces.  Here 
as  in  Java  the  work  began  at  a  very  early  period,  when  it 
was  probably  introduced  among  the  native  Malays  by  Brah- 
mans  from  India.33  Japan,  two-thirds  of  whose  area  is  moun- 
tainous, has  terraced  its  steep  valley  walls  often  up  to  2000 
feet  or  more,  and  utilized  every  patch  of  ground  susceptible 
of  tillage.34 

Among  A  mountain  environment  often  occasions  a  forced  develop- 

mountain  ment  in  the  form  of  agriculture  among  peoples  who  other- 
wise still  linger  in  a  low  stage  of  barbarism  or  savagery.  The 
wild,  head-hunting  Igorots,  inhabiting  the  Cordilleras  of  north 
central  Luzon,  have  levelled  the  face  of  their  mountains  into 
a  series  of  platforms,  held  by  retaining  walls  from  twenty  to 
thirty  feet  high.  On  these  they  cultivate  upland  rice  at  an 
altitude  of  5000  feet.  The  Igorot  province  of  Bontoc  con- 
tains valleys  in  which  every  available  foot  of  land  is  terraced 
for  rice,  and  which  present  artificial  landscapes  vividly  recall- 
ing Japan.  Labor  is  the  heritage  of  each  inhabitant.  Every 
man,  woman  and  child  down  to  ten  years  of  age  shares  in  the 
work  of  providing  food.35  Africa  shows  parallel  cases.  The 
Angoss  people,  a  savage  negro  tribe  who  occupy  part  of  the 
Murchison  Range  in  northern  Nigeria,  have  mapped  out  all 
their  sloping  land  into  little  terraces,  sometimes  only  a  foot 
or  two  wide.  One  of  their  peaks,  4135  feet  high,  has  its 
plateau  top  covered  with  populous  villages,  owing  to  the  pro- 
tection of  the  site,  and  every  inch  of  its  slope  cut  into  terraces 
planted  with  millet  and  guinea  corn.36  A  more  primitive  form 
of  this  tillage  is  found  in  the  country  of  the  Marunga  negroes, 
who  occupy  the  steep  western  face  of  the  rift  valley  filled  by 
Lake  Tanganyika.  Here  Cameron  found  the  surface  not 
regularly  terraced,  but  retaining  walls  of  loose  stones  disposed 
at  intervals,  which  served  to  hold  the  soil  in  place,  without 
greatly  altering  the  natural  slope.  The  scene  recalled  the  ter- 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  571 

raced  heights  of  Switzerland,  and  the  people  working  there 
looked  like  flies  on  a  wall.37  In  the  semi-arid  country  of  Su- 
danese Darfur,  where  only  the  mountain  districts  are  well 
watered  and  thickly  populated,  small  terraces  for  grain  and 
melons  cover  all  the  slopes.38 

Mountain  agriculture  is  necessarily  laborious.  The  paucity  Fertilizing, 
of  arable  land  precludes  the  possibility  of  letting  fields  lie 
fallow.  These,  to  prevent  exhaustion,  must  be  constantly 
and  abundantly  fertilized,  all  the  more  as  conditions  of  exces- 
sive subaerial  denudation  found  in  the  steep  slope  and  usual 
heavy  rainfall  of  mountains,  as  well  as  possible  glacial  scour- 
ing of  the  land  in  the  past,  have  greatly  attenuated  the  layer  ^ 
of  soil  called  upon  to  support  plant  life.  The  Swiss  or  Tyro- 
lese  farmer  cherishes  his  manure  pile  as  at  once  source 
and  badge  of  his  wealth.  After  harvest  it  is  carted  or  carried 
in  baskets  not  only  to  the  terraces,  but  also  to  the  wide 
alluvial  fan  that  grows  his  oats  and  rye,  to  his  meadows  and 
hay  fields.  Both  in  Mexico  and  Peru  the  soil  received  a  dress- 
ing of  poudrette.  Manuring  was  most  extensive  where  pop- 
ulation was  densest,  as  in  the  isolated  mountain  valleys 
opening  out  upon  the  desert  coast  of  Peru.  Every  kind  of 
organic  refuse  was  utilized,  and  fish  was  buried  with  the 
kernels  of  maize  as  a  fertilizer.  The  deposits  of  guano  found 
on  the  headlands  and  off-shore  islands  were  used  from  the 
remotest  times.  Different  guano  beds  were  assigned  to  the 
several  provinces,  and  the  breeding  places  of  the  birds  were 
protected  by  law.39  Ashes  and  decayed  wood  were  employed 
for  the  same  purpose,  or  plants  were  dug  into  the  soil,  while 
human  manure  was  in  Mexico  a  marketable  commodity  as  in 
China.40 

In  all  mountain  regions  where  population  has  begun  to  Economy 
press  upon  the  meager  limits  of  subsistence,  level  land  and  °*  Ievel 
soil  are  at  a  premium.    In  ancient  Peru  space  was  begrudged 
for  the  dead.41    Cities  covered  considerable  space  on  the  roomy  villages, 
intermontane  plateaus ;   but   in   the   narrow   lateral  valleys, 
houses    and    temples    were    built    on    rocks,    in    order    to 
reserve   every   fertile   spot    for   agriculture.42      The   traveler 
notices  the  same  thing  throughout  the  Alps.     Compact  vil- 
lages cling  to  the  mountain  sides,  leaving  the  alluvial  hem  of 


572  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 

the  stream  or  level  glacial  terrace  free  for  the  much  needed 
fields.  Only  in  broad  longitudinal  valleys,  like  that  of  Ander- 
matt,  do  the  settlements  complacently  spread  out  their  skirts, 
or  on  wide  alluvial  fans  where  transverse  valleys  debouch  upon 
the  plains.  The  mountaineers  of  the  Crimea  construct  their 
houses  against  the  precipices,  excavating  into  their  face 
and  building  up  the  front  with  stones,  and  thus  reserve 
the  gentler  slopes  for  vineyards  and  gardens.43  In  the 
Kangra,  Kumaon,  and  Garhwal  districts  of  the  British  Hima- 
layas, the  large  Indian  villages  of  the  plains  give  place  to 
small  hamlets  or  detached  homesteads,  scattered  here  and 
•  there  wherever  occasional  patches  of  soil  on  a  hillside  or  in 

a  narrow  valley  offer  hope  of  sustenance.  These  hamlets 
or  dwellings  are  located  on  the  sides  of  the  mountains,  because 
level  spots  which  can  be  irrigated  must  be  reserved  for  rice 
fields.44  The  high  site  is  also  freer  from  malaria. 

Perpen-  In   the   high  Himalayan   province   of  Ladak   or  Western 

dicular  Tibet,  this  principle  of  land  economy  reaches  a  climax.     All 

settlement  is  on  the  perpendicular.  The  abrupt  mountain 
sides  are  honey-combed  with  tombs,  villages  and  Buddhist 
lamaseries  in  the  detached  localities  where  population  occurs. 
A  pleasure  walk  through  one  of  these  Tibetan  towns  means 
a  climb  by  steep  flights  of  steps  hewn  out  of  the  rock,  varied 
by  a  saunter  up  ladders,  where  the  sheer  face  of  a  cliff  must 
be  surmounted  to  reach  the  houses  on  a  ledge  above.45  Pictures 
of  these  recall  forcibly  the  cliff-dwellings  of  the  Pueblo 
Indians.  Even  the  important  market  city  of  Leh  covers  the 
lower  slope  of  the  mountain  at  an  altitude  of  11,500  feet, 
and  from  its  height  overlooks  the  cultivated  fields  in  the  sandy 
valley  bed  below,  made  fertile  by  irrigating  streams  from 
debouching  canons.48  The  Ladak  villages  always  shun  the 
plains.  The  desire  to  economize  level  arable  land  does  not 
alone  dictate  this  choice  of  sites,  however ;  the  motive  of  pro- 
tection against  inundation,  when  the  snows  melt  and  the 
streams  swell,  and  also,  to  some  degree,  against  hostile  attack, 
is  an  additional  factor.  In  the  mountainous  parts  of  over- 
crowded China,  again,  the  food  problem  is  the  dominant 
motive.  In  the  rugged  highland  province  of  Shensi,  a  village 
of  several  hundred  people  covers  only  a  few  acres,  and  rises 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  573 

in  closely  packed  tiers  of  houses  against  the  mountain  side.47 
In  the  wilder,  half-conquered  parts  of  Sze  Chuan  the  villages 
crown  the  lower  peaks,  cling  to  the  base  of  the  mountains, 
or  are  perched  on  ledges  of  rock  overlooking  the  gorges. 
Among  the  steep  cliffs  bordering  the  upper  Yangtze,  occupied 
chiefly  by  the  timid,  displaced  Mantze  aborigines,  at  an  alti- 
tude of  10,000  feet,  small  platforms  resting  on  beams  pro- 
jecting from  the  sheer  mountain  face  support  minute  houses, 
whose  backs  burrow  into  the  cliff  behind.  The  small  children 
are  tied  to  the  door  post,  to  keep  them  from  falling  into  the 
millet  field  below.  The  house  is  accessible  only  by  bolts  driven 
into  the  cliff.  Above  and  below  is  the  farm — small  patches 
of  tilled  soil,  often  not  larger  than  a  bath  towel,  to  which 
the  cultivator  lowers  himself  by  a  rope.48  Here  life  hovers  on 
the  brink  of  death  and  despair. 

Paucity  of  arable  land  in  mountain  regions  leads  to  the  Mountain 
utilization  of  the  untillable  slopes  for  stock  grazing.     This  Pastures 

industry  is  always  a  valuable  ally  to  mountain  agriculture 

...  ...  raising. 

on  account  of  the  manure  which  it  yields ;  but  in  high  altitudes, 

where  the  steepness  or  rockiness  of  the  soil,  cold  and  the 
brevity  of  the  growing  season  restrict  or  eliminate  cereal  crops, 
it  becomes  the  dominant  occupation  of  the  inhabitants,  while 
agriculture  takes  a  subordinate  place,  limited  to  the  produc- 
tion of  hay  and  fodder  for  the  winter  feeding  of  the  stock. 
Above  the  line  of  tree  growth  flourish  the  natural  summer 
pastures  up  to  the  border  of  perpetual  snow;  and  just  below 
lies  a  zone  which,  if  cleared  of  its  forests,  supports  a  thick 
carpet  of  grass  and  herbage,  though  too  cold  to  ripen  grain. 
The  high  pastures  are  particularly  nourishing.  Cows  feed- 
ing here  in  the  Alps  give  better  milk  than  the  "home"  or 
valley  cows,  though  a  smaller  quantity.  Sheep  and  goats  do 
equally  well,  but  swine  are  profitable  only  as  a  by-product, 
to  utilize  the  refuse  of  the  cheese  and  butter  industry.  The 
area  of  these  pastures  far  exceeds  that  of  arable  land  in 
mountain  regions.  In  Switzerland  they  comprise  about  27 
per  cent,  of  the  total  productive  area;  hay  meadows  24  per 
cent.,  but  fields  and  gardens  only  20  per  cent.49  In  the 
Austrian  province  of  Salzburg,  pastures  make  up  13.3  per 
cent.,  hay  meadows  34.5  per  cent.,  and  tilled  fields  only  11.7 


574  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Mountain 
herdsmen 
and  shep- 
herds. 


per  cent,  of  the  total  productive  area.  In  the  Tyrol  the 
figures  are  much  the  same.50  Since  Norway  has  over  67  per 
cent,  of  its  total  area  in  bare  mountains,  snow  fields,  bogs 
and  lakes,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  only  7.6  per  cent,  in 
pastures,  2.2  per  cent,  in  meadows,  and  0.7  per  cent,  in  grain 
fields;  but  here  the  pastures  are  ten  times  the  arable  area.51 
The  season  of  the  summer  feeding  on  the  grass  lands  is  short. 
In  the  so-called  High  Alps  it  frequently  lasts  only  six  or 
seven  weeks,  in  the  Grisons  at  most  thirteen  weeks,52  and  in 
Norway  from  two  to  three  months.53 

High  mountain  regions,  practically  restricted  to  this  Gras- 
wirthschaft,  soon  reach  their  maximum  of  prosperity  and 
population.  The  amount  of  hay  secured  for  the  winter  feed- 
ing limits  the  number  of  cattle,  and  the  number  of  the  cattle, 
through  their  manure,  fixes  the  valley  hay  supply.  Alpine 
pastures  cannot  be  enlarged,  and  they  may  be  reduced  by 
accidents  of  nature,  such  as  landslides,  devastating  torrents, 
or  advance  of  ice  fields  or  glaciers.  They  cannot  be  improved 
by  capital  and  labor,  and  they  may  deteriorate  chemically 
by  exhaustion.  The  constant  export  of  butter  and  cheese 
from  Alpine  pastures  in  recent  times,  without  substitution 
by  any  fertilizer  beyond  the  local  manure,  has  caused  the 
diminution  of  phosphoric  acid  in  the  soil  and  hence  im- 
poverishment. Canton  Glarus  has  shown  a  steady  decline 
since  1630  in  the  number  of  cows  which  its  mountain  pastures 
can  support.54  Many  other  Alpine  districts  show  the  same 
deterioration. 

The  remoteness  of  these  highland  pastures  from  the  perma- 
nent villages  necessitates  Sennemcirthschaft,  or  the  mainte- 
nance of  out-farms  and  shepherds  on  the  mountains  during  the 
grazing  season.  This  involves  a  semi-nomadic  existence  for 
such  inhabitants  as  serve  as  herdmen.  In  June,  as  soon  as  the 
high  pastures  begin  to  grow  green,  cattle,  sheep  and  goats 
ascend  step  by  step  in  the  wake  of  summer,  as  she  climbs 
the  slope,  and  they  return  in  autumn  to  the  valleys.  There 
they  feed  on  the  stubble  of  hay  and  grain  fields,  till  the  in- 
creasing cold  confines  them  to  their  low  stables.  The  hut 
of  the  Senner  or  Saetcr,  as  the  herdsman  is  variously  called 
in  Switzerland  and  Norway,  consists  of  a  living  room  and  a 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  575 

smaller  apartment  for  making  butter  and  cheese,  while  against 
the  steep  slope  is  a  rude  stone  shelter  for  the  cattle  and  goats. 
The  predominance  of  summer  pastures  has  made  cattle-raising 
a  conspicuous  part  of  agriculture  in  the  Alps  and  in  Norway. 
In  many  parts  of  Switzerland,  cattle  are  called  "wares"  and 
the  word  cheese  is  used  as  a  synonym  for  food,  as  we  use  bread. 
A  Swiss  peasant  who  has  a  reputation  for  cheese  making  is 
popular  with  the  girls.05  Here  even  Cupid  turns  dairy  expert. 

Since  it  is   scarcely  practicable  to  divide  these   highland  Communal 
pastures,  they  have  generally  remained  communal  property,  °^n< 
whether  in  Norway,56  Switzerland,  the  Bavarian  Alps,  the  tein 
British  Himalayan  districts,57  Nepal  and  Bhutan,58  or  Kash-  tures. 
mir.59    In  Europe  their  use  is  generally  regulated.    As  a  rule, 
a  Swiss  villager  may  keep  on  the  Allmende  during  the  summer 
as  many  head  of  cattle  as  he  is  able  to  stall-feed  during  the 
winter.     Any  in  excess  of  this  number  must  be  paid  for  at  a 
fixed  rate  to  the  village  or  commune  treasury.60     Hay-sheds 
and  herdsmen's  huts  mark  these  districts  of  temporary  occu- 
pation  near  the   altitude   limits    of   human   life   throughout 
Europe.     In  Asia,  likewise,  are  to  be  found  small  villages, 
inhabited  only  in  summer  by  herdsmen  tending  their  flocks. 
Such  is  the  hamlet  of  Minemerg,  located  at  an  altitude  of  about 
8000  feet  at  the  southern  entrance  to  the  Borzil  Pass  over 
the  Western  Himalayas,  and  Sonamerg  (altitude  8650  feet 
or  2640  meters)  just  below  the  Zogi  La  Pass,  both  of  them 
surrounded  by  rich  meadows  on  the  northern  rim  of  the  Vale 
of  Kashmir.61 

The  utilization  of  mountain  pastures  for  stock  raising  is 
almost  universal.  In  the  arid  highlands  of  Central  Asia,  it 
is  the  essential  supplement  to  the  pastoral  nomadism  of  the 
steppes  and  deserts,  and  to  the  limited  sedentary  agriculture 
found  along  the  irrigated  piedmont  slopes.  Here  and  else- 
where the  animal  raised  varies  widely — the  llama  and  vicuna 
in  Peru,  which  thrive  best  at  10,000  to  13,000  feet  elevation, 
and  multiply  rapidly  on  the  ichu  or  coarse  grass  which  clothes 
the  slopes  of  the  higher  Andes  up  to  snow  line ;  sheep,  goats, 
yaks  and  herds  of  dzo,  a  useful  hybrid  between  yak  and  cow, 
in  the  highland  districts  of  Sze  Chuan.  Here  the  Mantze 
mountaineers  lock  their  houses  and  leave  their  villages  de- 


576  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 

serted,  while  they  camp  with  their  herds  on  the  high  pastures 
at  10,000  feet  or  more.62  Only  economical,  ingenious  Japan 
has  failed  to  develop  stock  raising,  though  mountains  comprise 
two-thirds  of  its  area.  The  explanation  has  often  been  sought 
in  Buddhism,  which  inhibits  the  use  of  animal  food;  but  this 
religious  rule  probably  found  ready  acceptance  in  Japan,  just 
because  the  paucity  of  animal  food  made  its  observance  easy, 
for  the  fish  industry  of  the  Empire  never  suffered  from  the  in- 
hibition. The  reason  is  probably  to  be  sought  elsewhere.  The 
native  grass  of  Japan,  which  relentlessly  crowds  out  all  im- 
ported grazing  crops,  is  a  bamboo  grass  with  sharp,  hard, 
serrated  edges,  and  is  said  to  cut  the  entrails  of  horses  and 
sheep.63 

Hay-  While  the  high  pastures  are  ample  for  the  summer  feed- 

ing, the  chief  problem  of  mountain  stock-farmers  is  to  secure 

mountains.  ^ee(^  ^or  ^ne  winter  support  of  their  animals.  This  taxes  their 
industry  and  ingenuity  to  the  utmost.  While  the  herdsmen 
are  away  tending  their  charges  on  the  heights,  the  rest  of 
the  population  are  kept  busy  at  home,  getting  fodder  for  the 
six  or  seven  months  of  stall-feeding.  This  includes  the  culti- 
vation of  hardy  crops  like  oats,  rye  and  barley,  which  will 
mature  at  a  great  altitude,  hay-making  and  collecting  twigs 
and  even  leaves  for  the  less  fastidious  goats.  In. Switzerland 
as  in  Norway  the  art  of  mowing  has  reached  its  highest  pitch. 
Grass  only  three  inches  high  is  cut  thrice  yearly.  The  Nor- 
wegian peasant  gathers  a  small  hay  harvest  from  the  roofs 
of  his  house  and  barns,  and  from  the  edges  of  the  highways. 
In  Switzerland  not  a  spear  of  grass  escapes.  In  places  in- 
accessible to  cattle  and  goats,  the  peasant  gathers  hay  by  the 
handful  with  crampons  on  his  feet,  generally  from  the  ledges 
of  cliffs.  He  stacks  it  in  one  spot,  and  brings  it  down  to  the 
valley  by  sledge  in  winter.  He  is  the  Wildhfuer  or  wild  hay 
gatherer.  His  life  is  so  dangerous,  that  the  law  permits  only 
one  Wildheuer  to  a  family.04  In  high  Alpine  cantons  this 
office  is  the  privilege  of  the  poor.85  The  traveler  in  Norway 
frequently  sees  huge  bundles  of  hay  sliding  down  to  the 
valley  on  wires  stretched  from  some  high  point  on  the  precipi- 
tous fiord  wall.  This  represents  the  harvest  from  isolated 
spots  or  from  the  field  of  the  summer  shepherd.  In  the  vicinity 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  577 

of  every  saeter  hut,  a  plot  of  ground  is  fenced  in,  enriched 
with  the  manure  gathered  during  the  summer,  and  utilized 
to  grow  fine  nourishing  grass,  which  is  mown  and  transported 
down  to  the  valley  farm.86  Here  economy  of  vegetative 
resources  reaches  its  climax. 

In  mountain  regions  of  heavy  rainfall,  thick  dew  and  numer-  Methods 
ous  cloudy  days,  it  becomes  a  problem  to  get  the  hay  dried  of  curing 
and  stored  before  a  drenching  shower  comes.  In  many  y  u 
parts  of  Switzerland,  therefore,  the  peasant  on  a  clear  morning 
cuts  a  limited  amount  of  grass.  This,  with  the  help  of  his 
wife  and  children,  he  diligently  turns  and  tosses  at  short 
intervals  all  day  long,  thus  subjecting  it  to  a  rapid  curing 
process  by  the  action  of  the  wind  and  the  sun,  whose  rays  are 
doubly  effective  in  the  rarefied  air  of  the  heights.  In  the 
evening  the  hay  is  made  up  into  bundles  and  carried  on  his 
back  to  the  barn.  In  other  parts  of  Switzerland  the  green 
hay  is  hung  on  horizontal  poles  arranged  against  the  sunny 
side  of  the  chalet  and  under  its  projecting  roof,  thus  exposed 
to  the  heat  and  protected  from  the  rain  till  cured.  In  Norway 
the  same  purpose  is  achieved  by  setting  up  in  the  fields  racks 
supporting  long  horizontal  bars,  over  which  the  newly  cut 
grass  is  hung.  There  it  is  exposed  to  the  gentle  fanning  of 
the  wind  and  penetrated  by  the  warmth  of  the  sun,  in  the 
short  intervals  when  the  sky  is  not  overcast;  and  during  a 
shower  it  sheds  the  water  immediately,  so  that  a  minimum  of 
harm  is  done.  In  the  mountains  of  Germany,  the  hay  is 
stacked  on  cone-shaped  racks  made  of  poles,  with  lateral  pro- 
jections which  support  the  grass;  thus  the  air  can  circulate 
freely  inside  the  hollow  cone,  which  is  lifted  well  above  the 
ground.  Elsewhere  sharpened  stakes  provided  with  cross  bars 
are  simply  driven  into  the  ground,  and  on  these  the  hay 
is  draped  till  cured. 

Mountain  hay-making  leaves  nothing  to  chance;  too  much 
depends  upon  the  crop.  In  fact,  at  high  altitudes  it  becomes 
the  only  crop.  Cereal  culture  drops  off  with  every  increase 
of  elevation.  Norway  has  few  fields  above  1600  feet;67  even 
barley  fails  to  ripen  above  2600  feet.  In  the  mountains  of 
Wiirtenberg  we  find  pure  Graswirthschaft  at  3000  feet 
elevation,  with  only  a  small  garden  patch  near  the  dwell- 


578  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Winter  in- 
dustries of 
mountain 
peoples. 


ing.68  It  is  interesting  to  take  a  tramp  up  one  of  the  longi- 
tudinal or  lateral  valleys  of  the  Alps,  and  observe  the  economic 
basis  of  life  gradually  change  from  agriculture  to  hay-making, 
till  in  some  high-laid  Alpine  cirque,  like  Bad  Leuk  or  Barmaz 
at  the  head  of  the  Val  d'llez,  one  sees  only  meadows  and  an 
occasional  potato  patch,  which  impresses  the  lowlander  as  a 
last  despairing  effort  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 

Where  climate  and  soil  do  so  little  for  the  support  of  life, 
man  must  do  much.  Work  must  in  some  way  be  made  to 
compensate  for  an  ungenerous  Nature.  The  closely  housed 
existence  necessitated  by  the  long  severe  winters  of  high  alti- 
tudes stimulates  industries  in  the  home.  The  winter  feeding 
of  the  stock  involves  little  labor,  so  the  abundant  leisure  would 
otherwise  be  wasted.  Hence  it  is  no  accident  that  we  finrl 
almost  everywhere  native  mountain  industries  in  a  high  state 
of  development,  and  often  characterized  by  an  artistic  beauty 
which  seems  to  be  the  one  flower  of  this  barren  environment. 
They  are  naturally  based  upon  the  local  raw  materials  of  the 
mountains,  such  as  wood,  metals,  clays,  and  especially  the 
wool  of  sheep  and  goats.  Moreover,  their  products  are  articles 
of  small  bulk  and  large  value,  adapted  to  costly  mountain 
transportation.  Those  of  Kashmir  are  typical — carved  wood, 
artistic  metal  work  in  silver  and  copper,  puttoo  cloth,  carpets 
and  the  famous  Kashmir  shawls.69  The  stark  life  of  Tibet 
shows  in  its  industries  an  unexpected  richness  and  beauty. 
The  men  spin  and  weave  wool  into  puttoo  cloth  of  all  grades ; 
some  of  it  is  extraordinarily  fine  in  texture  and  color,  and  is 
exported  by  caravan  in  considerable  quantity  to  northern 
China  and  Mongolia.  Pastil  sticks,  made  of  aromatic  wood 
and  impregnated  with  musk  and  gold-dust,  are  a  conspicuous 
commodity  in  the  trade  with  Peking.  Tibet  is  rich  in  metals, 
especially  silver  and  gold.  Even  the  nomad  shepherds  of  the 
tablelands  know  how  to  purify  gold-dust  over  a  fire  of  argols ; 
hence  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  settlements  in  the  irrigated 
mountain  valleys  should  develop  real  artists  in  metallurgy.70 
The  province  of  Derge,  which  excels  in  metal  work,  produces 
swords,  guns,  teapots,  bells  and  seals  of  extremely  artistic 
design  and  perfect  finish.71  The  jewelry  of  Tibet  suggests 
Byzantine  work.  It  includes  ear-rings  and  charm  boxes  of 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  579 

gold  and  carved  turquoise,  and  is  marked  by  the  same  delicate 
finish.  But  whether  the  Tibetan  is  working  in  wood,  gold, 
brass,  or  wool,  he  uses  native  designs  of  real  merit,  and  shows 
the  expert  craftsman's  hand.'2  His  activities  recall  the  metal 
work  of  the  Caucasus  and  the  famous  rugs  of  Daghestan. 

Turning  to  Europe  we  find  watch  and  clock  making  in  the 
Black  Forest  and  the  Jura,  wood-carving  in  the  Swiss  and 
Norwegian  mountains,  bobbin  lace  in  the  Erz  range  and  in 
Alpine  Appenzell,  and  the  far  more  beautiful  Italian  product 
of  the  rugged  Abruzzi  and  the  Frioulian  Alps.  The  Slovaks 
of  highland  Hungary  are  expert  in  wire-drawing,'3  and  the 
peasant  of  the  central  Apennines  makes  from  the  gut  of  his 
goats  the  finest  violin  strings  in  the  world,  the  so-called  Roman 
strings.74  The  low  Thuringian  and  Franconian  Forests,  which 
harbor  denser  populations,  have  by  a  minute  subdivision  of 
labor  turned  their  local  resources  to  the  making  of  dolls,  which 
they  supply  to  the  markets  of  the  world.  Here  too  the  manu- 
facture of  glass  articles,  porcelains,  majolica  and  terra-cotta 
flourishes.70  Most  of  these  mountain  industries  merely  supple- 
ment the  scant  agricultural  resources;  they  represent  the  > 
efforts  of  industrious  but  hard  pressed  people  to  eke  out  their 
meager  subsistence. 

The  application  of  steam  to  industry  has  converted  Overpopu- 
mountain  regions  of  abundant  mineral  wealth  into  centers  of  ktipn  and 
production  for  the  markets  of  the  world.  But  this  is  the  his- 
tory of  only  the  last  century,  and  of  only  favored  mountain  re- 
gions. The  utilization  of  waterpower  for  electricity  in  factories 
is  transforming  the  piedmont  belts  of  the  Alps  and  Apennines ; 
but  life  in  the  interior  of  these  ranges  remains  unaltered  by 
the  denser  population  at  their  base,  except  for  the  increased 
demand  for  the  butter,  milk  and  cheese  of  the  highland  pas- 
tures. For  the  world  at  large,  therefore,  the  obvious  and  per- 
sistent fact  of  mountain  economy  is  a  scanty  food  supply  se- 
cured by  even  the  most  intelligent  and  untiring  labor,  and  a 
fixed  tendency  to  overpopulation.  The  simplest  remedy  for  this 
evil  is  emigration,  a  fact  which  Malthus  observed.70  Hence 
emigration  is  an  almost  universal  phenomenon  in  highland 
regions.  Sometimes  it  is  only  seasonal.  It  takes  place  in  the 
fall  after  the  field  work  is  over,  and  is  due  to  the  paucity  of 


580  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


industries  possible  in  the  mountains  during  the  winter.  It 
seems  to  be  a  recurrence  of  that  noniadic  note  in  the  motif 
of  mountain  life — that  migration  in  summer  upward  to  the 
borders  of  the  snow,  in  winter  downward  to  the  sun-warmed 
plains.  In  autumn  the  Swiss  descend  from  the  Jura  and 
Alps  in  great  numbers  to  cities,  seeking  positions  as  servants 
or  pastry-cooks.  The  Auvergnats  leave  their  home  by  the 
thousand  in  the  fall,  when  snow  covers  the  mountains,  to  work 
in  the  cities  as  hewers  of  stone  and  drawers  of  water,  then 
return  in  summer  to  resume  their  tasks  in  field  and  pasture, 
bringing  back  sums  of  money  which  noticeably  enrich  the 
home  districts.77 

Forms  of  This  seasonal  emigration  often  assumes  the  form  of  ped- 

temporary  dling,  in  order  to  dispose  of  small  home-made  wares.  From  the 
emigration.  Basilicata  and  Modena  Apennines  the  young  men  follow  the 
pedler's  trade,  but  the  Basilicata  village  of  Viggiano  furnishes 
Italy  with  many  wandering  musicians.78  The  Kabyles  of  the 
Atlas  Mountains  go  out  in  parties  of  two  or  three  in  the  fall, 
and  hawk  every  kind  of  goods,  bringing  back  from  their 
journey  quantities  of  wool  for  home  weaving.79  The  emigra- 
tion may  last  for  several  years,  but  finally  the  love  of  home 
generally  calls  the  mountaineer  back  to  his  rugged  hills. 
The  Galicians  of  the  Cantabrian  Mountains  of  northern  Spain 
leave  their  poor  country  for  a  time  for  the  richer  provinces 
of  Portugal  and  Spain,  where  they  become  porters,  water- 
carriers  and  scavengers,  and  are  known  as  boorish,  but  indus- 
trious and  honest.  The  women  from  the  neighboring  mountain 
province  of  Asturias  are  the  professional  wet-nurses  of  Spain. 
They  are  to  be  seen  in  every  aristocratic  household  of  Madrid, 
but  return  to  the  mountains  with  their  savings  when  their 
period  of  service  ends.80  In  mountainous  Basutoland,  the 
Kaffir  Switzerland  of  South  Africa,  arable  land  and  pastures 
are  utilized  as  completely  as  local  methods  of  husbandry  per- 
mit ;  and  yet  the  native  Kaffirs  go  in  large  numbers — 28,000 
out  of  a  total  population  of  220,000  in  1895 — to  work  in  the 
mines  of  Kimberley  and  the  Witwatersrand.  They  also  return 
in  time  with  their  savings.81  Similarly  the  Battaks  of  the 
rugged  mountain-rimmed  plateau  of  western  Sumatra  emi- 
grate in  increasing  numbers  to  the  lowlands,  and  hire  them- 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  581 

selves  out  for  a  term  of  years  on  the  Dutch  plantations.82 
Another  interesting  and  once  rather  widespread  phase  of 
this  temporary  emigration  appears  in  the  mercenary  troops 
formerly  drawn  from  mountain  regions.  After  the  Burgun- 
dian  wars  of  the  fifteenth  century,  the  Swiss  became  the 
mercenaries  of  Europe,  and  in  1503  were  first  employed  as 
papal  life-guards.  They  served  the  kings  of  France  from 
Louis  XL  till  the  tragedy  of  the  Tuileries  in  1792;  and  in 
that  country  and  elsewhere  they  made  the  name  "Switzer" 
a  synonym  for  guard  or  attendant,83  till  in  1848  the  mercen- 
ary system  was  abolished.  The  pressure  of  population  at  home 
and  the  military  spirit  of  the  Scotch  Highlanders  once  led  the 
young  Gaels  to  seek  their  fortunes  in  military  service  abroad, 
as  in  the  army  of  Gustavus  Aclolphus  of  Sweden.8*  Gurkhas 
from  Himalayan  Nepal,  an  independent  state,  are  employed  in 
considerable  numbers  in  the  Indian  army  to-day,  and  consti- 
tute one  of  the  most  reliable  divisions  of  the  native  troops.  In 
January,  1901,  there  were  12,797  Gurkhas  drawing  pay  from 
the  Indian  government  as  soldiers,  besides  6000  more  employed 
as  military  police,  porters,  and  in  other  capacities.85  Similar- 
ly ancient  Arcadia,  the  mountain  core  of  Peloponnesus,  was 
a  constant  hive  of  mercenaries. 

Often,  however,  permanent  emigration  is  the  result,  robbing  Permanent 
the  mountain  population  of  its  most  enterprising  element,  emigration. 
Piedrnontese,  Bergamese,  and  Frioulians  from  the  Italian  Alps 
leave  their  country  in  large  numbers.  Many  of  them  find 
work  in  Marseilles  and  other  towns  of  southern  France,  infus- 
ing an  Italian  strain  into  the  population  there  and  making  seri- 
ous competition  for  the  local  French.  A  proverb  says  there  is 
no  country  in  the  world  without  sparrows  and  Bergamese.88 
Geneva,  once  the  citadel  of  Calvinism,  is  to-day  a  Catholic 
town,  owing  to  the  influx  of  Catholic  laborers  from  Alpine 
Savoy.  The  overflow  of  the  redundant  population  of  this 
mountain  province  has  given  the  Swiss  canton  a  character 
diametrically  opposed  to  its  traditions.87  The  Chinese  prov- 
inces of  Chili  and  Manchuria  have  been  largely  populated  by 
immigrants  from  the  barren  mountain  peninsula  of  Shantung ; 
Manchuria  has  thereby  been  converted  from  an  alien  into 
a  native  district.88 


582  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Preventive 
checks  to 
increase  of 

population. 


Emigration  on  so  large  a  scale  exercises  far-reaching  eco- 
nomic and  historical  influences.  Norse  colonization  contributed 
interesting  chapters  to  the  history  of  Europe  in  the  ninth  and 
tenth  centuries.  Norwegians  who  have  flocked  to  America 
have  made  a  deep  impress  upon  our  Northwestern  States. 
Switzerland  in  1902  and  1903  gave  us  9500  of  its  subjects, 
a  valuable  contribution.  Scotchmen  of  Highland  birth  are 
scattered  over  the  whole  world,  carrying  with  them  everywhere 
their  sturdy  qualities  of  character.  Even  the  stay-at-home 
French  lose  emigrants  from  their  mountain  districts.  The 
people  of  the  Basses-Alps  go  to  Mexico,  and  the  Basques 
from  the  French  Pyrenees  seek  Argentine.88  The  honesty, 
industry,  and  frugality  of  these  mountain  emigrants  make 
them  desirable  elements  in  any  colonial  population,  and  insure 
their  success  when  they  seek  their  fortunes  in  the  uncrowded 
western  world. 

The  alternative  to  overpopulation  and  its  remedy  emigra- 
tion is  found  in  preventive  checks  to  increase.  Th6se  some- 
times take  the  form  of  restricted  or  late  marriages,  as  Malthus 
found  to  be  the  case  in  Norway  and  Switzerland  in  1799,90 
before  the  introduction  of  steam  or  electric  motive  power  had 
stimulated  the  industries  of  these  countries  or  facilitated  emi- 
gration thence.  The  same  end  is  achieved  by  the  widespread 
religious  celibacy  which  sometimes  characterizes  mountain 
communities.  In  the  barren  Auvergne  Plateau  of  France,  the 
number  of  younger  sons  who  become  priests  is  extraordinary. 
Man}'  daughters  become  nuns.  Celibacy,  seconded  by  exten- 
sive emigration,  clears  the  field  for  the  eldest  son  and  the 
system  of  primogeniture  which  the  poverty  of  this  ru^. 
highland  has  established  as  a  fixed  institution  in  the  Auver- 
gne.01  A  careful  statistical  investigation  of  the  geographical 
origins  of  the  Catholic  priesthood  in  Europe  might  throw 
interesting  light  on  the  influences  of  environment.  The  harsh 
conditions  of  mountain  life  make  the  monastery  a  line  of  least 
resistance,  while  geographical  isolation  nourishes  the  religious 
nature  and  benumbs  the  intellectual  activities. 

It  is  in  the  corrugated  highland  of  Tibet,  chilled  to  barren- 
ness by  an  elevation  of  12,000  feet  or  more  (4000  meters), 
sterile  and  treeless  from  aridity,  carved  by  canon-cutting 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  583 

streams  into  deep  gorges  offering  a  modicum  of  arable  soil  for 
irrigation,  that  monasticism  has  developed  into  an  effective 
system  to  keep  down  population.  Buddhism,  with  its  convents 
and  lamaseries,  naturally  recommended  itself  to  a  country 
where  asceticism  was  obviously  expedient.  The  world  shows 
nowhere  else  so  large  a  celibate  class.  In  Tibet,  monks  are 
estimated  at  175,000  to  500,000  in  a  total  population  of  three 
millions.  Archibald  Little  estimates  their  number  at  one-third 
of  the  total  male  population.02  Derge,  which  is  the  most 
productive  district,  both  agriculturally  and  industrially  of 
eastern  Tibet  and  is  also  most  densely  inhabited,  counts  at 
least  10,000  lamas  in  a  total  population  of  about  42,000.93 
Not  less  than  one-sixth  of  the  inhabitants  of  Ladak  are  in 
religious  houses  as  monks  and  nuns.94  Families  in  Tibet  are 
small,  yet  each  devotes  one  or  more  children  to  convent  or 
monastic  life.95  In  western  Tibet,  especially  about  Taklakot 
in  the  Himalayan  border,  one  boy  in  every  family  is  invariably 
devoted  to  the  priesthood,  and  one  or  more  daughters  must 
become  nuns.  But  the  nun  generally  resides  with  her  family 
or  lives  in  some  monastery — -with  unspeakable  results.98 

The  Tibetans  seem  to  be  enthusiastic  Malthusians,  with  Polyandry, 
all  the  courage  of  their  convictions.  Religious  celibacy  among 
them  is  only  an  adjunct  to  another  equally  effective  social 
device  for  restricting  population.  This  is  the  institution  of 
polyandry,  which  crops  out  in  widely  distributed  mountain 
regions  of  limited  resources,  just  as  it  appears  not  infrequently 
in  primitive  island  societies.  Its  sporadic  occurrence  in  exten- 
sive lowlands,  as  among  the  Warraus  of  Guiana  and  certain 
tribes  of  the  Orinoco,  is  extremely  rare,  as  also  its  occasional 
appearance  among  pastoral  steppe-dwellers,  like  the  Hotten- 
tots and  Damaras.97  It  is  often  associated  with  polygamy 
where  wealth  exists,  and  is  never  the  exclusive  form  of  mar- 
riage, yet  its  frequency  among  mountain  peoples  is  striking. 
Strabo  describes  fraternal  polyandry  as  it  existed  in 
mountainous  Yemen.  There  among  a  Semitic  people,  as  to-day 
in  Mongolian  Tibet  and  among  the  aboriginal  Todas  of  the 
Nilgiri  Hills  in  peninsular  India,  the  staff  of  one  husband 
left  at  the  door  of  the  house  excluded  the  others.98  In 
modern  times  the  institution  is  found  throughout  Tibet, 


and  in  the  Himalayan  and  sub-Himalayan  districts  adjoining 
it,  as  in  Ladak,  Kunawar,  Kumaon,  Garhwal,  Spiti,  Sirmur, 
among  the  Miris,  Daphlas,  Abors  and  Bhutias  occupying  the 
southern  slope  of  the  Himalayans  eastward  from  Sikkim,  and 
the  Murmese  tribes  of  the  Khasia  Hills  just  to  the  south. 
The  same  practice  occurs  among  the  Coorgs  of  the  Western 
Ghats,  among  the  Nairs  at  the  coastal  piedmont  of  this  range, 
among  the  Todas  of  the  mountain  stronghold  known  as  the 
Nilgiri  Hills  (peaks  8000  feet  or  2630  meters),  and  it  crops 
out  sporadically  among  certain  mountain  Bantu  tribes  of 
South  Africa." 

Female  There  seems  little  doubt  that  polyandry,  as  Herbert  Spencer 

infanticide,  maintains,  has  been  adopted  as  an  obvious  and  easy  check 
upon  increase  of  population  in  rugged  countries.100  It  is 
generally  coupled  with  other  preventive  checks.  In  the  Nil- 
giri Hills,  as  we  found  also  to  be  the  case  on  many  Polynesian 
islands,  it  is  closely  associated  with  female  infanticide.101 
The  Todas  in  1867  showed  a  proportion  of  two  men  to  one 
woman,  but  later,  with  the  decline  of  infanticide  under  British 
rule,  a  proportion  of  100  men  to  75  women,  and  a  resulting 
modification  of  the  institution  of  polyandry.102  It  may  well 
be  that  the  paucity  of  women  suggested  this  form  of  marriage, 
whose  expediency  as  an  ally  to  infanticide  in  checking  popu- 
lation later  became  apparent.  The  Todas  are  a  very  primitive 
folk  of  herdsmen,  living  on  the  produce  of  their  buffaloes, 
averse  to  agriculture,  though  not  inhibited  from  it  by  the 
nature  of  their  country,  therefore  prone  to  seek  any  escape 
from  that  uncongenial  employment,103  and  relying  on  the  pro- 
tected isolation  of  their  habitat  to  compensate  for  the  weakness 
inherent  in  the  small  number  of  the  tribe. 

Throughout  Tibet  and  Ladak  polyandry  works  hand  in 
hand  with  the  lamaseries  in  limiting  population.  The  conspic- 
uous fact  in  Tibetan  polyandry  is  its  restriction  to  the  agricul- 
tural portion  of  the  population.  The  pastoral  nomads  of  the 
country,  depending  on  their  yaks,  sheep  and  goats,  wandering 
at  will  over  a  very  wide,  if  desolate  territory,  practice  mon- 
ogamy and  polygamy. 10<  The  sedentary  population,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  restricted  to  tillable  lands  so  small  that  each 
farm  produces  only  enough  for  one  family.  Subdivision  under 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  585 

a  divided  inheritance  would  be  disastrous  to  these  dwarf 
estates,  especially  owing  to  possible  complications  growing 
out  of  irrigating  rights.105  Polyandry  leaves  the  estate  and 
the  family  undivided,  and  by  permitting  only  one  wife  to 
several  fraternal  husbands  restricts  the  number  of  children. 
It  does  this  also  in  another  way  by  diminishing  the  fertility 
of  the  mothers ;  for  all  travelers  comment  upon  the  paucity 
of  children  in  polyandrous  families. 

Westermarck  lays  stress  upon  the  fact  that  polyandry 
prevails  chiefly  in  sterile  countries.  He  regards  it  less  as 
a  conscious  device  to  check  increase  of  population  than  a 
result  of  the  disproportion  of  males  to  females  in  polyandrous 
communities.  The  preponderance  of  male  births  he  attrib- 
utes to  the  excessive  endogamy  bordering  on  inbreeding  which 
tends  to  prevail  in  all  isolated  mountain  valleys;  and  also,  as 
a  possibility,  to  the  undernourished  condition  of  the  parents 
caused  by  scanty  food  supplies,  which  Diising  found  to  be 
productive  of  a  high  percentage  of  male  births  in  proportion 
to  female. 10f  The  motive  of  restricting  population  seems  en- 
titled to  more  weight  than  Westermarck  concedes  to  it ;  for  he 
slurs  over  the  fact  that  in  Tibet  polyandry  gives  rise  to  a 
large  number  of  superfluous  women  who  fill  the  nunneries,107 
while  in  the  Nilgiri  Hills  redundant  females  were  eliminated 
by  infanticide.  The  fact  seems  to  be  that  in  the  institution 
of  polyandry  we  have  a  social  and  psychological  effect  of 
environment,  reinforced  by  a  physiological  effect. 

A  comparison  of  social  conditions  in  the  adjoining  provinces  Effects  of 
of  Baltistan  and  Ladak,  which  together  comprise  the  Himal-  polyandry 
ayan  valley  of  the  Indus,  reveals  the  character  of  polyandry  a 
as   a  response  to  geographic  environment.      Both  provinces 
are  inhabited  by  a  Mongolian  stock,  but  the  Ladaki  living 
on  the  uppermost  stretch  of  the  basin  near  Tibet  are  Bud- 
dhists and  polyandrists,  while  the  Baltis  farther  down  the  val- 
ley are  Mussulmen  and  polygamists.     The  Baltis,  with  their 
plurality  of  wives  and  numerous  children,  are  wretchedly  poor 
and  live  in  squalor  on  the  verge  of  starvation ;  but  as  the 
elevation  of  their  valley  ranges  only  from  4000  to  8500  feet, 
they  are  inured  to  heat,  and  therefore  emigrate  in  large  num- 
bers to  the  neighboring  Mohammedan  province  of  the  Punjab, 


586  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Marauding 
tendencies 
in  moun- 
taineers. 


where  they  work  as  coolies  and  navvies.  The  Ladakis,  on  the 
other  hand,  living  9000  to  13,000  feet  above  the  sea,  die  of 
bilious  fever  when  they  reach  the  lowlands.  Cut  off  from 
emigration,  they  curtail  population  by  means  of  polyandry 
and  lamaseries.  Consequently  they  show  signs  of  pros- 
perity, are  well  fed,  well  clothed  and  comfortably  housed.10' 
Baltistan's  social  condition  illustrates  in  a  striking  way  the 
power  of  an  idea  like  an  alien  creed,  assimilated  as  the  result 
of  close  vicinal  location,  to  counteract  for  a  time  the  influ- 
ences of  local  geographic  conditions. 

The  less  civilized  mountain  peoples,  whose  tastes  or  low 
economic  status  unfit  them  for  emigration,  solve  the  problem 
of  a  deficient  food  supply  by  raiding  the  fields  and  stores  of 
their  richer  neighbors.  Predatory  expeditions  fill  the  history 
of  primitive  mountain  peoples,  and  of  the  ancient  occupants 
of  highland  regions  which  are  now  devoted  to  honest  industry. 
The  ancient  Alpine  tribes  were  one  and  all,  from  the  Mediter- 
ranean to  the  Danube,  "poor  and  addicted  to  robbery,"  as 
Strabo  says.  He  analyzes  their  condition  with  nice  discrim- 
ination. "The  greater  part  [of  the  Alps],  especially  the 
summits  of  the  mountains  inhabited  by  robbers,  are  barren  and 
unfruitful,  both  on  account  of  the  frost  and  the  ruggedness 
of  the  land.  Because  of  the  want  of  food  and  other  nec- 
essaries, the  mountaineers  have  sometimes  been  obliged  to 
spare  the  inhabitants  of  the  plains,  that  they  might  have 
some  people  to  supply  them."1  The  freebooters  usually 
descended  into  the  lowlands  of  Italy,  Gaul  and  Helvetia,  but 
the  pass  peoples  lay  in  wait  for  their  prey  on  the  mountain 
roads.  Strabo  described  the  same  marauding  habits  arising 
from  the  same  cause  among  the  mountaineers  of  northern 
Spain,110  the  Balkan  range,111  and  the  highlands  encircling 
the  Mesopotamian  plains.112 

Hunger  is  usually  the  spur.  The  tribesmen  who  inhabit 
the  Hunza  gorge  were  notorious  robbers  till  their  recent  con- 
quest by  the  British.  Despite  the  most  careful  terrace  tillage, 
their  country  was  much  overpopulated.  The  supply  of  grain 
was  so  inadequate,  that  during  the  summer  the  people  sub- 
sisted wholly  on  fruit,  reserving  the  grain  for  winter  use. 
Therefore,  when  early  summer  opened  the  passes  of  the  Kara- 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  587 

koram  and  Himalayan  ranges,  and  caravans  began  to  move 
over  the  trade  route  between  Kashmir  and  Yarkand,  when 
the  Kirghis  nomads  from  the  plains  sought  the  pastures  of 
the  Pamir,  the  Hunza  tribesmen  found  raiding  caravans  and 
herds,  and  pillaging  the  Gilgit  Valley  of  Baltistan  the  easiest 
means  of  supplementing  their  slender  resources.  Hardy  moun- 
taineers as  they  were,  and  born  fighters,  they  always  con- 
ducted their  forays  successfully,  and  returned  to  the  shelter 
of  their  fastnesses,  laden  with  plunder  and  driving  thei" 
captive  flocks  before  them.  The  perpetual  menace  of  these 
Hunza  raids  caused  large  districts  in  the  Gilgit  Valley  to  be 
abandoned  by  their  inhabitants,  and  cultivated  land  to  lapse 
into  wilderness,113  while  the  Chilas  to  the  south  pillaged  the 
Astor  Valley  of  Baltistan,  carrying  away  crops  and  cattle, 
enslaving  women  and  children.114 

Marauding  propensities  are  marked  among  all  retarded  Cattle- 
mountain  peoples  of  modern  times.  The  cattle-lifting  clans  lifting- 
of  the  Scotch  Highlands,  who  preyed  upon  the  Lowlands, 
have  their  counterpart  in  the  Pathans  of  the  Suleiman  and 
Baluch  mountain  border  who,  till  curbed  by  the  British  power 
in  India,  systematically  pillaged  the  plains  of  the  Sind.115  The 
forest  Bhils  of  the  Vindhyan  and  Satpura  ranges  are  scarcely 
yet  married  to  agriculture;  so  when  in  time  of  drought  their 
crops  fail  and  the  game  abandons  the  hill  forests  to  seek  water 
in  the  lowland  jungles,  the  Bhils  cheerfully  revert  to  their 
ancestral  habit  of  cattle-lifting.116 

The  Caucasus  was  long  a  breeding  place  for  robber  tribes 
who  made  their  forays  into  the  pastures  and  fields  of  southern 
Russia.  Robbery  was  part  of  the  education  of  every  Circas- 
sian prince,  while  one  group  of  the  Abassines  conferred  their 
chieftainship  upon  the  most  successful  robber  or  the  man  of 
largest  family.117  The  Kurdish  hillmen  of  the  Armenian  ranges 
descend  with  their  herds  of  horses  in  winter  to  the  warmer 
plains,  where  they  exhaust  the  pastures  and  subject  the 
Armenian  villages  to  a  regular  system  of  blackmail.118  The 
wide  grassy  plains  about  Koukou  Nor  Lake,  near  the  Chinese 
border  of  Tibet,  attract  numerous  Mongol  nomads  with  their 
herds ;  but  these  rich  pastures  are  exposed  to  the  depredation 
of  Si  Fan  brigand  tribes,  who  have  their  haunts  in  the  deep, 


588  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Historical 
results  of 
mountain 
raiding. 


impenetrable  gorges  of  the  neighboring  mountains,  and  care- 
fully guard  all  the  approaches  to  the  same.  They  are  Bud- 
dhists, but  worship  a  special  Divinity  of  Brigandage,  to  whom 
their  lamas  offer  prayers  for  the  success  of  every  foray.1" 
Hence,  among  mountain  as  among  desert  peoples,  robbery 
tends  to  become  a  virtue;  environment  dictates  their  ethical 
code. 

These  depredations  reflect  to  a  great  degree  the  complemen- 
tary relation  of  highlands  and  lowlands.  The  plains  possess 
what  the  mountains  lack.  This  is  a  fundamental  fact  of'eco- 
nomHTgeography^  Imd  inevitably  leads  to  historical  results. 
The  marauding  expeditions  of  mountain  peoples  first  acquire 
historical  importance,  either  when  the  raids  after  long  con- 
tinuance end  in  the  conquest  of  the  lowlands,  and  thus  augment 
the  resources  and  population  of  the  highland  state;  or,  as  is 
often  the  case,  the  raiders  call  down  upon  themselves  the 
vengeance  of  the  plainsmen,  are  subdued,  and  embodied  in  the 
lowland  state.  The  conquest  of  ancient  Assyjia  and  the  de- 
struction of  Nineveh  by  the  mountain  Medes  seems  to  have 
been  a  process  of  this  kind.  Long  before  their  descent  upon 
Mesopotamia,  they  were  known  as  the  "dangerous  Medes," 
were  constantly  threatening  the  Assyrian  frontiers  and  occupy- 
ing isolated  tracts.120  The  predatory  incursions  of  the 
Samnites  of  the  Apennines  into  the  fertile  fields  of  Campania 
eventuated  in  the  conquest  of  ancient  Capua  and  other  cities, 
and  greatly  strengthened  the  Samnitc  Confederacy.  But  this 
encroachment  of  the  mountain  tribes  upon  the  plains  aroused 
the  cupidity  and  alarm  of  the  Romans,  who  in  turn  bent  their 
energies  toward  the  final  subjugation  of  the  Samnites.121 
Himalayan  Nepal,  after  the  unification  of  its  petty  Rajah 
states  by  the  Gurkha  conquest  between  1768  and  1790,  began 
encroachments  and  ravages  upon  the  Indian  Terai  or  fertile 
alluvial  lowland  at  the  foot  of  the  mountains ;  and  finally  by 
1858  had  acquired  title  to  a  considerable  strip  of  it,  which  by 
its  rice  fields  and  forests  greatly  strengthened  the  geographic 
and  economic  base  of  the  highland  state.122  The  Malay  Hovas, 
inhabiting  the  central  plateau  of  Madagascar,  braced  to 
effort  by  its  temperate  climate  and  not  over-generous  soil, 
have  almost  everywhere  subdued  the  better  fed  but  sluggish 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  589 

lowlanders-of  the  coast.123  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the 
beneficent  effects  of  an  invigorating  mountain  climate,  es- 
pecially in  tropical  and  subtropical  latitudes,  have  helped 
the  hardy,  active  hill  people  to  make  easy  conquest  of  the 
enervated  plainsmen. 

It  is  more  often  the  case,  however,  that  the  scant  resources,  Conquest 
small  number,  and  divided  political  condition  of  the  mountain  of  moun- 
tribes  make  such  conquest  impossible.  Their  depredations 
provoke  reprisals  from  the  stronger  states  of  the  plain,  who 
bring  the  mountain  region  under  subjection,  merely  to  police 
their  frontier.  Strabo  makes  it  clear  that  theJRomans,  having 
secured^certain  passes  over  the  Alps,  neglected  the  conquest 
of  the  ranges,  till  the  increase  of  Roman  colonies  along  the 
piedmont  rim  excited  the  cupidity  of  the  mountaineers.  Mus- 
covite dominion  was  extended  over  the  Caucasus,  both  in  order 
to  check  the  persistent  raids  of  its  tribes  into  the  Russian 
plains,  and  to  secure  control  of  its  passes.  The  state  of 
Kashmir,  guided  by  a  purely  local  policy,  for  years  tried  to 
conquer  the  robber  tribes  on  its  northwestern  frontier,  merely 
to  protect  its  own  border  provinces.  Then  the  British  authori- 
ties of  the  Indian  Empire  began  the  same  process,  but  from 
a  radically  different  motive.  They  saw  the  Gilgit  and  Hunza 
valleys,  like  the  Chitral  to  the  west,  as  highways  through  a 
mountain  transit  land,  whose  opposite  approaches  were  held 
by  the  Russians.124 

Such  conquests,  whatever  be  their  motive,  profit  the  van- 
quished in  the  end  more  than  the  victor.  They  result  in  the 
systematic  and  intelligent  development  of  the  mountain  re- 
sources, and  the  maintenance  of  ampler  social  and  economic 
relations  between  highland  and  lowland  through  the  con- 
struction of  roads,  which  must  always  represent  the  reach  of 
the  governing  authority.  The  conquest  of  mountain  peoples 
means  always  expensive  and  protracted  campaigns.  The 
invader  has  always  two  enemies  to  fight,  Nature  and  the  armed 
foe.  There  is  a  saying  in  India  that  "In  Gilgit  a  small  army 
is  annihilated  and  a  large  army  starves  to  death."  Hunger 
is  king  in  high  altitudes,  and  comes  always  to  the  defense  of 
mountain  independence.  Moreover,  the  inaccessibility  of  such 
districts,  the  difficulty  of  maintaining  lines  of  communication, 


590  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Political 
dismember- 
ment of 
mountain 
peoples. 


ignorance  of  by-paths  and  trails  which  forever  offer  strategic 
opportunities  to  the  natives  or  escape  at  a  crisis,  all  serve 
to  protract  the  war.  The  independent  spirit  of  the  mountain- 
eer, his  endurance  of  hardships,  his  mastery  of  mountain  tac- 
tics, and  his  obstinate  resistance  after  repeated  defeat,  give 
always  a  touch  of  heroism  to  highland  warfare.  Consequently, 
history  abounds  in  examples  of  unconquered  mountain  peoples, 
or  of  long  sustained  resistance,  like  that  which  for  sixty  years 
under  the  heroic  leadership  of  Kadi  Mulah  and  Shamyl 
used  up  the  treasure  and  troops  of  Russia  in  the  impregnable 
defiles  of  the  Caucasus.  In  the  end,  however,  the  highland 
tribes  succumb  to  numbers  and  the  road-making  engineer. 

Political  dismemberment,  lack  of  cohesion  due  to  the  pres- 
ence of  physical  barriers  impeding  intercourse,  is  the  inherent 
weakness  of  mountain  peoples.  Political  consolidation  is 
never  voluntary.  It  is  always  forced  upon  them  from  without, 
either  by  foreign  conquest  or  by  the  constant  menace  of  such 
conquest,  which  compels  the  mountain  clans  to  combine  for 
common  defense  of  their  freedom.  The  combination  thus 
made  is  reluctant,  loose,  easily  broken,  generally  short-lived. 
It  becomes  close  and  permanent  only  under  a  constant  pressure 
from  without,  and  then  assumes  a  form  allowing  to  the 
constituent  parts  the  greatest  possible  measure  of  independ- 
ence. The  Swiss  canton  and  commune  are  the  result  of  a 
segregating  environment;  the  Swiss  Republic  is  the  result  of 
threatened  encroachments  by  the  surrounding  states.  It  owed 
its  first  genuine  federal  constitution  to  Napoleon. 

A  report  on  the  situation  in  the  Caucasus,  addressed  to 
Czar  Nicholas  in  1829,  contains  an  epitome  of  the  history  of 
mountain  peoples.  It  runs  as  follows :  "The  Circassians  bar 
out  Russia  from  the  south,  and  may  at  their  pleasure  open 
or  close  the  passage  to  the  nations  of  Asia.  At  present 
their  intestine  dissensions,  fostered  by  Russia,  hinder  them 
from  uniting  under  one  leader;  but  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that,  according  to  traditions  religiously  preserved  among 
them,  the  sway  of  their  ancestors  extended  as  far  as  to  the 
Black  Sea.  *  *  *  The  imagination  is  appalled  at  the  con- 
sequence which  their  union  under  one  leader  might  have  for 
Russia,  which  has  no  other  bulwark  against  their  ravages 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  591 

than  a  military  line,  too  extensive  to  be  very  strong."125  Here 
we  have  the  whole  story — a  mountain  people  pillaging  the 
lowlands,  exercising  a  dangerous  and  embarrassing  control 
over  the  passes,  and  thereby  calling  down  upon  themselves 
conquest  from  without;  weakened  by  a  contracting  territory 
within  the  highlands  and  a  shrinking  area  of  plunder  without, 
doomed  to  eventual  defeat  by  the  yet  more  ominous  weakness 
of  political  dismemberment. 

Mountain  tribes  are  always  like  a  pack  of  hounds  on  the  Individu- 
leash,  each  straining  in  a  different  direction.     Wall-like  bar-  f 
riers,  holding  them  apart  for  centuries,  make  them  almost  pen(ience 
incapable  of  concerted  action,  and  restive  under  any  authority 
but  their  own.    Clan  and  tribal  societies,  feudal  and  republican 
rule,  always  on  a  small  scale,  characterize  mountain  sociology. 
All  these  are  attended  by  an  exaggerated  individualism  and 
its  inevitable  concomitant,  the  blood  feud.     Mountain  policy 
tends  to  diminish  the  power  of  the  central  authority  to  the 
vanishing  point,  giving  individualism  full  scope.     Social  and 
economic   retardation,  caused  by   extreme  isolation   and   en- 
couraged by  protected  location,  tend  to  keep  the  social  body 
small  and  loosely  organized.     Every  aspect  of  environment 
makes  against  social  integration. 

The  broken  relief  of  ancient  Greece  produced  the  small  city 
state;  but  in  the  rugged  mountains  of  Arcadia  the  principle 
of  physical  and  political  subdivision  went  farther.  Here,  for 
four  centuries  after  the  first  Olympiad,  the  population,  poor- 
est and  rudest  of  all  Greece,  was  split  up  into  petty  hill 
villages,  each  independent  of  the  other.12(  The  need  of 
resisting  Spartan  aggression  led  for  the  first  time,  in  371  B. 
C.,  to  the  formation  of  a  commune  Arcadum,  a  coalescence 
of  all  the  fractional  groups  constituting  the  Arcadian  folk  ;121 
but  even  this  union,  effected  only  by  the  masterly  manipulation 
of  the  Theban  Epaminondas,  proved  short-lived  and  incom- 
plete. What  was  true  of  the  Arcadian  villages  was  true  of 
the  city  states  of  Greece.  The  geography  of  the  land  instilled 
into  them  the  principle  of  political  aloofness,  except  when 
menaced  by  foreign  conquest.  Cooperation  is  efficient  only 
when  it  springs  from  a  habit  of  mind.  Greek  union  against 
the  Persians  was  very  imperfect;  and  against  the  Roman,  the 


592  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Types  of 
mountain 
states. 


feeble  leagues  were  wholly  ineffective.  The  influence  of  this 
dismembering  environment  still  persists.  As  ancient  Greece 
was  a  complex  of  city  states,  modern  Greece  is  a  complex  of 
separate  districts,  each  of  which  holds  chief  place  in  the  minds 
of  its  citizens,  and  unconsciously  but  steadily  operates  against 
the  growth  of  a  national  spirit  in  the  modern  sense.128 

A  mountain  environment  encourages  political  disunion  in 
several  forms.  Sometimes  it  favors  the  survival  of  a  turbulent 
feudal  nobility,  based  upon  clan  organization,  as  among  the 
medieval  Scotch,  who  were  not  less  rebellious  toward  their 
own  kings  than  toward  the  English  conquerors.125  Feudal 
rule  seems  congenial  to  the  mountaineer,  whose  conserva- 
tive nature,  born  of  isolation,  clings  to  hereditary  chiefs  and  a 
long  established  order.  Feudal  communities  and  dwarf  re- 
publics exist  side  by  side  in  the  northern  Caucasus,130  attenclecl 
by  that  primitive  assertion  of  individual  right,  the  blood 
feud.131  Often  the  two  forms  of  government  are  combined, 
but  the  feudal  element  is  generally  only  a  dwindling  survival 
from  a  remote  past.  The  little  Republic  of  Andorra,  which 
for  a  thousand  years  has  preserved  its  existence  in  the  pro- 
tection of  a  high  Pyrenean  valley,  is  a  self-governing  com- 
munity, organized  strictly  along  the  lines  of  a  Tyrolese  or 
Swiss  commune;  but  the  two  ziguiers  or  agents,  who  in  some 
matters  outrank  the  president,  are  official  appointments  trac- 
ing back  to  feudal  days,  when  Andorra  was  a  seigneurie  of 
the  Comte  of  Urgel.132  Tyrol  offers  a  striking  parallel  to 
this.  In  its  local  affairs  it  has  in  effect  a  republican  form  of 
government,  enjoying  as  high  degree  of  autonomy  as  any 
Swiss  canton ;  but  the  great  Brenner  route,  which  could  confer 
both  power  and  wealth  on  its  possessor,  made  the  Tyrol  an 
object  of  conquest  to  the  feudal  nobles  of  the  early  Middle 
Ages.  Their  hereditary  dominion  is  now  vested  in  the  arch- 
dukes of  Austria,  to  whom  the  Tyrolese  have  shown  unfailing 
fidelity,  but  from  whom  they  have  exacted  complete  recogni- 
tion of  their  rights.133 

Tyrol's  neighbor  Switzerland  illustrates  the  pure  form  of 
commune,  canton  and  republic,  which  is  the  logical  result  of 
a  rugged  mountain  relief.  Here  commune  and  canton  are 
the  real  units  of  government.  In  the  federal  power  at  Bern  the 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  593 

Swiss  peasant  takes  little  interest,  often  not  even  knowing  the 
name  of  the  national  president.  In  the  highest  ranges  a  Canton 
coincides  with  a  mountain-rimmed  valley — Valais  with  the 
basin  of  the  upper  Rhone,  Glarus  with  the  upper  Linth,  Uri 
with  the  Reuss,  Graubiinden  with  the  upper  Rhine,  to  which 
is  joined  by  many  pass  routes  the  sparsely  peopled  Engadine, 
Ticino  with  the  drainage  basin  of  upper  Lake  Maggiore, 
Unterwalden  with  the  southern  drainage  valleys  of  Lake 
Lucerne.  Where  the  mountains  are  lower,  or  where  passes 
connect  valleys  of  high  levels,  cantonal  boundaries  may  over- 
step geographical  barriers.  A  commune  generally  consists  of 
the  villages  strung  along  a  narrow  lateral  valley,  isolated  and 
sufficient  unto  itself  politically.  A  close  parallel  to  the  Alpine 
commune  is  found  among  the  Kabyles  of  the  Atlas  Mountains. 
Their  political  structure  is  based  upon  the  Jemaa  or  commune, 
a  small  sovereign  republic  whose  independence  is  fiercely  de- 
fended. It  enjoys  complete  local  autonomy,  is  governed  by 
an  assembly  of  all  the  adult  male  inhabitants,  and  grants 
this  body  the  usual  functions  except  the  administration  of 
justice,  which,  characteristically,  is  replaced  by  blood  feuds 
as  the  inalienable  right  of  the  individual.  Romans,  Arabs, 
Turks  and  French  have  in  turn  exercised  over  these  mountain 
Berbers  only  nominal  control,  except  when  their  internal  dis- 
sensions made  them  vulnerable.134 

The  mountains,  by  the  segregating  power  of  their  ridges  Signifi- 
and  ranges,  first  produce  these  little  independent  communities,  cance  c 
and   then,   throwing   around   them   strong   protecting   arms,    . 
enfold  them  in  an  embrace  which  long  provides  security  to 
them    in    their    weakness.      These    minute    mountain    states, 
therefore,  tend  to  reflect  in  their  size  the  isolation  of  their 
environment,  and  indirectly  the  weakness  of  the  surrounding 
nations.     The  original  Swiss  Eidgenossensschaft  of  the  four 
forest  cantons,  embedded  in  the  high  Alps,  braced  against  a 
mountain  wall,  held  its  own  against  the  feeble  feudal  states 
of    Austria    and    Germany.      The    rugged    relief   of    Grau- 
biinden   and    the    spirit    of    freedom    cradled    there    enabled 
its   peasants   in   the   Middle   Ages   to   overthrow   the   feudal 
lords,  and  to  establish  a  federal  republic.    This  typical  moun- 
tain state  was  a  league  composed  of  three  other  leagues.   Each 


594  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Slight 
power  of 
mountain 
chiefs. 


component  league  consisted  of  a  group  of  districts,  having  the 
power  of  sovereign  states,  and  consisting  in  turn  of  a  group  of 
communes,  which  were  quite  independent  in  local  affairs. 
This  triune  league  formed  in  time  an  alliance  with  the  Swiss 
Confederation,  but  did  not  become  a  member  of  it  till  the 
Vienna  adjustment  of  1815.  Similar  is  the  story  of  the  moun- 
tain shepherds  of  Appenzell,  who  formed  a  little  peasant 
republic,  despite  their  bishop  overlord  of  St.  Gall ;  and  who 
later  during  the  Reformation,  on  the  ground  of  religious 
differences,  divided  into  two  yet  smaller  states.131  The  rela- 
tion between  size  and  inaccessibility  is  most  strikingly  illus- 
trated in  the  high  Himalayan  ranges  west  of  Kashmir  and 
north  of  the  Punjab.  Here  is  the  Shinaka  district,  which  in- 
cludes the  Chilas,  Darel,  Tanger  and  other  valleys  branching 
off  from  the  Indus,  and  which  is  inhabited  by  Dards  of  Indo- 
European  stock.  Each  Shinaka  valley  is  a  small  cantonal 
republic,  and  each  village  of  each  republic  is  a  commune 
managing  its  own  affairs  by  an  assembly.  One  settlement  of 
only  twelve  houses  enjoys  complete  autonomy.  Besides  the 
village  assemblies  there  is  a  state  parliament  handling  ques- 
tions of  general  policy,  to  which  each  village  sends  represen- 
tatives. One  dissentient  vote  can  defeat  a  measure.  The 
majority  cannot  control  the  minority;  for  if  one  village  of 
a  state  disagrees  with  the  others,  it  is  free  to  carry  out  its  own 
policy,  even  in  the  matter  of  foreign  alliances.13*  Here  is 
home  rule  run  to  seed. 

Small  size  is  sometimes  coupled  with  monarchical  rule, 
degenerating  occasionally  into  despotism  among  aggres- 
sive robber  tribes.  The  inaccessible  Hunza  Valley  is  oc- 
cupied on  opposite  sides  of  its  deep  gorge  by  two  rival 
states,  the  Hunzas  and  the  Nagaris,  whose  combined  popula- 
tion amounts  to  scarcely  25,000  souls.  Hostile  to  each  other, 
they  unite  only  to  resist  an  invading  force.  While  the  Hunza 
Thum  is  a  tyrant,  the  Nagari  ruler  has  little  voice  in  the 
government.  The  Tibeto-Burman  hill  folk  of  the  eastern 
Himalayas  are  divided  into  clans,  and  concede  a  mild  author- 
ity to  a  chief  who  rules  a  group  of  clan  villages,  but  only 
rarely  is  able  to  secure  power  over  a  larger  district.  The 
Khasia  Hills  of  Assam  are  broken  up  into  twenty-three  petty 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  595 

states,  each  under  its  own  Rajah  or  chief,  who  has,  however, 
little  authority  beyond  the  administration  of  justice.137 

Everywhere  in  mountain  regions  appears  this  repugnance 
to  centralized  authority.  Protection  by  environment  obviates 
the  necessity  of  protection  through  combination.  The  spirit 
of  clan  exclusiveness,  the  absence  of  a  common  national  senti- 
ment, characterize  equally  the  tribesmen  of  mountainous 
Albania,  of  Persian  Luristan,1GS  and  highland  Kurdis- 
tan. Along  the  rugged  upheaved  area  which  forms  the 
western  boundary  of  India  from  the  Khaibar  Pass  to  the  sea, 
British  officials  have  had  to  negotiate  with  the  native  Pathan 
and  Baluch  "jirgahs,"  assemblies  of  the  chief  men  of  the 
countless  clans  into  which  the  tribes  are  divided,  as  the  only 
visible  form  of  authority  tolerated.131  Combination  must  be 
voluntary  and  of  a  type  to  exact  a  modicum  of  submission. 
These  requirements  are  best  answered  by  the  confederation, 
which  may  gradually  assume  a  stable  and  elaborate  form 
among  an  advanced  people  like  the  Swiss ;  or  it  may  consti- 
tute a  loose  yet  effective  union,  as  in  the  famous  Samnite 
confederacy  of  the  central  Apennines;  or  a  temporary 
league  like  that  of  the  ancient  Arcadians,  or  the  group  of  con- 
federated sheiks  of  Bellad  el  Kobail,  the  "Country  of  the 
Highlanders"  in  mountainous  Yemen,  who  in  1790  estab- 
lished a  republican  form  of  union  for  defense  against  their 
more  powerful  neighbors. 14C 

The  power  of  mountains  to  protect  makes  them  asylums  of  Mountain 
refuge  for  displaced  peoples.      This   fact  explains  the  con-  isolation 

fused    ethnology    which    often    characterizes    these    isolated 

.°-7  .  .          cntiation. 

regions,  especially  when  they  lie  near  or  across  natural  high- 
ways of  human  migration.  As  a  tide  of  humanity  sweeps 
around  or  across  the  mountains,  a  branch  stream  turns  into 
a  side  valley,  where  it  is  caught  and  held.  There  it  remains 
unaltered,  crystallizing  in  its  seclusion,  subjected  for  ages  to 
few  modifying  influences  from  without.  Its  people  keep  their 
own  language  and  customs,  little  affected  by  a  totally  different 
race  stock  similarly  placed  in  a  neighboring  alcove  of  the 
mountains.  Lack  of  communication  engenders  an  endless 
multiplication  of  dialects,  as  we  find  them  in  the  Alps,  the 
Caucasus,  in  Kafirstan  of  the  Hindu  Kush  and  in  Nepal. 


596  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Survival  of 
primitive 
races  in 

mountains. 


Diversity  of  speech,  itself  a  product  of  isolation,  reacts  upon 
that  political  and  social  aloofness  of  mountain  folk,  to  empha- 
size and  fix  it. 

From  this  principle  it  follows  that  the  same  highland 
region  shows  strong  differentiation  and  marked  social 
individuality  from  one  district  to  another,  and  from  one  val- 
ley to  the  next,  despite  a  prevailing  similarity  of  local  geo- 
graphic conditions.  In  fact,  the  very  similarity  of  those 
conditions,  strong  in  their  power  to  isolate,  present  the  con- 
ditions for  inevitable  variation.  A  mountain  region  gets  it> 
population  from  diverse  sources,  or,  which  is  quite  as  im- 
portant, at  different  times  from  the  same  source.  For  instance, 
Nepal  received  contingents  of  Rajput  conquerors,  dislodged 
from  the  Punjab,  in  the  seventh  century,  the  eleventh,  and 
finally  the  dominant  Gurkhas  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth. 
To-day  these  represent  different  degrees  of  amalgamation  with 
the  local  Tibetan  stock  of  Nepal.  They  are  distinguished 
from  each  other  by  a  diversity  of  languages,  and  a  multiplicity 
of  dialects,  while  the  whole  piedmont  of  the  country  shows  a 
yet  different  blend  with  the  Aryan  Hindus  of  the  Ganges  val- 
ley, who  have  seeped  into  the  Terai  and  been  drawn  up,  as 
if  by  capillary  attraction,  into  the  hill  valleys  of  the  outer 
range.  The  Vindhyan  Range  and  its  associated  highlands. 
long  before  the  dawn  of  Indian  history,  caught  and  held  in 
their  careful  embrace  some  of  the  fragile  aboriginal  tribes  like 
the  Kolarian  Ho,  Santals  and  Korkus.  Centuries  later  tha 
Dravidian  Bhils  and  Gonds  sought  refuge  here  before  the 
advancing  Indo-Aryans,  and  found  asylums  in  the  secluded 
valleys.141  Finally  those  same  northern  plains  whence  the 
Dravidians  had  come,  after  the  Mohammedan  conquest  of 
central  India  in  the  sixteenth  century,  sent  flying  to  the  refuge 
of  the  hills  a  large  contingent  of  Hindus  of  mingled  Dravidian 
and  Aryan  stocks,  but  stamped  with  the  culture  of  the  Ganges 
basin.  These  occupied  the  richer  valleys  and  the  more  acces- 
sible plateaus  of  the  highlands,  driving  the  primitive  Gonds 
and  Bhils  back  into  the  remoter  recesses  of  the  mountains. 14: 
Dravidians  and  aboriginal  Kolarians  survive  in  their  pu- 
rity in  the  wilder  and  more  inaccessible  regions,  but  in  the 
lower  valleys  their  upper  classes  show  signs  of  mixtures  with 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  597 

the  Rajput  invaders,  while  the  lower  classes  betray  little  Ar- 
yan blood.143 

Afghanistan,  of  disordered  relief,  set  as  a  transit  region  Diversity 

between  the  plains  of  Mesopotamia,  the  Oxus  and  the  Indus,  °  people 

£ind. 
has  a  confused  ethnology  in  keeping  with  the  tangle  of  dis-  ... 

sected  plateaus  and  mountain  systems  which  constitute 
its  surface.  Here  we  find  three  distinct  branches  of  the 
Indo-European  race,  divided  up  into  various  peoples  of 
diverse  tongues  and  subdivided  further  into  countless  tribes; 
and  two  branches  of  Mongol-Tartars  scattered,  as  if  out  of  a 
pepper  box,  from  the  Helmund  to  the  Oxus,  tossed  in  among 
diverse  peoples  of  Iranic  and  Galcha  origin  in  hopeless  con- 
fusion. The  various  Afghan  tribes,  separated  from  each 
other  by  natural  barriers  and  intervening  alien  stocks,  though 
similar  in  physical  type,  speech,  religion  and  culture,  have 
no  sense  of  unity,  no  common  political  aims,  while  the  appal- 
ling list  of  tribes  constituting  the  population  of  the  country144 
offers  little  hope  of  Afghanistan  ever  developing  national  co- 
hesion. Kafiristan  alone,  which  lies  in  the  Hindu  Rush  range 
for  the  most  part  at  an  altitude  of  12,000  feet  or  more, 
harbors  in  its  recesses  many  remnants  of  primitive  peoples, 
speaking  various  languages  and  dialects,  strangers  alike  to 
any  native  affinity  or  political  union.  It  is  a  mere  agglomera- 
tion of  ethnic  fragments,  in  which  the  people  of  one  village 
are  often  unable  to  converse  with  those  of  the  next.145  Relief 
has  fashioned  the  ethnology  of  the  Caucasus  in  the  same  way. 
No  other  equally  small  area  in  the  world  contains  such  a  vari- 
ety of  peoples  and  tongues,  differing  from  one  another  in  race, 
language,  and  customs  so  fundamentally  as  the  Caucasus. 
From  the  heterogeneous  survivals  of  extremely  old  ethnic 
stocks,  lodged  in  the  high  valleys,  to  the  intrusive  Russians 
of  the  lower  piedmont,  the  Caucasus  might  be  called  an  ethno- 
graphical sample  card.14* 

The  rugged  configuration  of  the  Alps,  from  the  Rhone  to 
the  Danube,  has  preserved  the  broad-headed  Alpine  race, 
which  was  perhaps  the  primitive  stock  of  Central  Europe. 
The  great  river  valleys  leading  into  this  massive  highland, 
like  the  Rhine,  Aar,  Inn  and  Adige,  show  the  intrusion  of  a 
long-headed  race  from  both  north  and  south;  but  lofty  and 


598  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Constriction 
of  moun- 
tain areas 
of  ethnic 
survivals. 


remote  valleys  off  the  main  routes  of  travel,  like  the  Hither 
Rhine  about  Dissentis,  the  little  Stanzerthal  of  the  upper  Inn, 
and  the  Passicrthal  of  the  upper  Adige  above  Meran,  show 
the  race  preserved  in  its  purity  by  the  isolating  environ- 
ment.147 Here  each  segregated  lateral  valley  becomes  an  area 
of  marked  linguistic  and  social  differentiation;  only  where  it 
opens  into  the  wider  longitudinal  valleys  are  its  peculiarities 
of  speech  and  custom  diluted  by  the  intrusive  current  of 
another  race.  Switzerland  has  received  three  different  streams 
of  language,  and  broken  them  up  into  numerous  rwilets  of  dia- 
lect. On  its  small  area  of  16,125  square  miles  (41,346  square 
kilometers)  thirty-five  dialects  of  German  are  spoken,  sixteen 
of  French,  eight  of  Italian  and  five  of  Romansch,  a  primitive 
and  degenerate  Latin  tongue,  surviving  from  the  ancestral 
days  of  Roman  occupation.148  The  yet  smaller  territory  of 
the  Tyrol  has  all  these  languages  except  French,  whose  place 
is  taken  by  various  forms  of  Slavonic  speech  which  have 
entered  by  the  western  tributaries  of  the  Danube.1*' 

Rarely  is  a  polyglot  mountain  population  able  to  work 
out  its  own  political  salvation,  as  the  Swiss  have  done.  More 
often  political  union  must  be  forced  upon  them  from  without. 
Oftener  still,  when  the  highlanders  are  primitive  survivals,  ill- 
matched  against  the  superior  invaders  from  the  plain,  they  are 
doomed  to  a  process  of  constriction  of  territory  and  deteriora- 
tion of  numbers,  which  proceeds  slowly  or  rapidly  according 
to  the  inaccessibility  of  their  environment  and  the  energy  of 
the  intruders.  Deliberate,  unenterprising  nations,  like  the 
Chinese,  Turks  and  Indo- Aryans  long  tolerate  the  presence  of 
alien  mountain  tribes,  who  remain  like  enemies  brought  to 
bay  in  their  isolated  fortresses.  The  conquerors  throw  around 
them  at  their  leisure  a  cordon  of  settlement,  which,  slowly 
ascending  the  piedmont,  draws  closer  and  closer  about  the 
mountaineers.  The  situation  of  many  mountain  tribes  re- 
minds one  of  a  besieged  stronghold.  Russian  wars  against  the 
Caucasus  have  rightly  been  described  as  protracted  sieges. 
The  heroic  history  of  Switzerland  in  relation  to  its  neighbors 
has  been  that  of  a  skillfully  conducted  defense,  both  military 
and  diplomatic.  The  territory  of  China  is  dotted  over  with 
detached  groups  of  aborigines,  who  have  survived  wherever  a 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  599 

friendly  mountain  has  offered  them  an  asylum.  Variously 
known  as  Lolos,  Mantze  or  Miaotse,  they  have  preserved 
everywhere  a  semi-independence  in  pathless  mountains,  whither 
Chinese  troops  do  not  dare  to  follow  them;150  but  the  more 
numerous  and  patient  Chinese  agriculturalists  are  in  many 
sections  slowly  encroaching  upon  their  territories,  driving 
them  farther  and  farther  into  the  recesses  of  their  highlands. 
The  same  process  goes  on  in  Formosa,  where  the  Chinese 
have  gradually  forced  the  native  Malays  into  mountain  fast- 
nesses among  the  peaks  which  rise  to  14,000  feet  (4500 
meters).  There,  split  up  by  internecine  feuds  into  number- 
less clans  and  tribes,  ignorant  of  one  another's  languages, 
raiding  each  other's  territories  and  the  coastal  plains  tilled 
by  Chinese  colonists,  they  await  their  doom,  while  the  pied- 
mont zone  between  has  already  given  birth  to  a  typical  border 
race  of  halfbreeds,  more  Chinese  than  Malay.151 

"To  have  and  to  hold"   is   the  motto  of  the  mountains.  Isolation 
Like  remote  islands,  they  are  often  museums   of  social  an-  an(|  retar~ 

tiquities.      Antiquated    races    and   languages    abound.      The 

.  mountain 

mountaineers  of  the  Southern  Appalachians  speak  to-day  an  rem0ns> 

eighteenth  century  English.  Their  literature  is  the  ballad 
poetry  of  old  England  and  Scotland,  handed  doAvn  from 
parent  to  child.  Clan  feuds  settle  questions  of  justice,  as  in 
the  Caucasus  and  the  Apennines.  Religion  is  orthodox  to  the 
last  degree,  sectarianism  is  rigid,  and  Joshua's  power  over  the 
sun  remains  in  some  lonely  valleys  undiscounted.152  These 
are  all  the  marks  of  isolation  and  retardation  which  appear  in 
similar  environments  elsewhere.  Especially  religious  dogmas 
tend  to  show  in  mountains  a  tenacity  of  life  impossible  in  the 
plains.  The  Kafirs,  inhabiting  the  high  Hindu  Kush  Moun- 
tains of  Badakshan,  and  apparently  of  Pelasgic,  early  Greek, 
or  Persian  origin,  have  a  religion  blended  of  paganism, 
Zoroastrianism  and  Brahmanism.153  One  intruding  faith  has 
been  unable  to  dislodge  the  previous  incumbent,  so  the  three 
have  combined.  The  great  historical  destiny  of  the  small, 
barren,  isolated  Judean  plateau  was  to  hold  aloof  the  chaste 
religion  of  the  desert-bred  Jews  from  the  sensuous  agricultural 
gods  of  the  Canaanites ;  to  conserve  and  fix  it ;  if  need  be,  to 
narrow  it  to  a  provincial  tribal  faith,  to  stamp  it  with  ex- 


600  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 


Conser- 
vatism of 
mountain 
peoples. 


clusiveness,  conservatism,  and  formalism,  as  its  adherents  with 
bigotry,154  for  this  is  always  the  effect  of  geographical  seclu- 
sion. But  when  all  these  limitations  of  Judaism  are  acknowl- 
edged, the  fact  remains  that  that  segregated  mountain  en- 
vironment performed  the  inestimable  service  for  the  world  of 
keeping  pure  and  undefiled  the  first  and  last  great  gift  of  the 
desert,  a  monotheistic  faith. 

Buddhism,  once  the  official  religion  of  Korea  but  dis- 
established three  centuries  ago,  has  taken  refuge  in  the  Dia- 
mond Mountains,  far  from  the  main  roads ;  there  a  dull,  mori- 
bund form  of  the  faith  dozes  on  in  the  monasteries  and 
monastic  shrines  of  these  secluded  highlands.155  Driven  out 
of  India,  Buddhism  survives  only  in  the  Himalayan  border  of 
the  country  among  the  local  Tibeto-Burman  peoples,  and 
in  Ceylon,  whose  mountain  city  of  Kandy  is  its  stronghold. 
The  persecuted  Waldenses,  a  heretic  sect  who  fled  in  1178 
from  the  cities  of  France  to  the  Alps,  took  refuge  in  the 
remote  valleys  of  the  Pellice,  Chisone,  and  Augrogne  some 
thirty  miles  southwest  of  Turin.  There,  protected  equally 
against  attack  and  modification,  the  Waldenses  have  main- 
tained the  old  tenets  and  organization  of  their  religion.15' 

The  mountain-dweller  is  essentially  conservative.  There 
is  little  in  his  environment  to  stimulate  him  to  change,  and 
little  reaches  him  from  the  outside  world.  The  "spirit  of  the 
times"  is  generally  the  spirit  of  a  past  time,  when  it  has 
penetrated  to  his  remote  upland.  He  is  strangely  indifferent 
to  what  goes  on  in  the  great  outstretched  plains  below  him. 
What  filters  in  to  him  from  the  outside  has  little  suggestion 
for  him,  because  it  does  not  accord  with  the  established  order 
which  he  has  always  known.  Hence  innovation  is  distasteful 
to  him.  This  repugnance  to  change  reaches  its  clearest  ex- 
pression, perhaps,  in  the  development  and  preservation  of 
national  costumes.  TracTit,  which  is  crystallized  style  in 
dress,  appears  nowhere  so  widespread  and  so  abundantly 
differentiated  as  in  mountain  districts.  In  Switzerland,  every 
canton  has  its  distinctive  costume  which  has  come  down  from 
a  remote  past.  The  peasants  of  Norway,  of  the  German  and 
Austrian  Alps,  of  the  Basque  settlements  in  the  Pyrenees,  of 
mountain-bound  Alsace  and  Bohemia,  give  local  color  to  the 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  601 

landscape  by   the   picturesqueness   of  their   national   dress. 

With  this   conservatism   of  the   mountaineer   is   generally  Mental 
coupled  suspicion  toward  strangers,  extreme  sensitiveness  to  an^ 
criticism,  superstition,  strong  religious  feeling,  and  an  intense  n 
love  of  home  and  family.     The  bitter  struggle  for  existence 
makes    him    industrious,    frugal,    provident;    and,    when    the 
marauding  stage  has  been  outgrown,  he  is  peculiarly  honest  as 
a  rule.      Statistics  of  crime  in  mountain   regions   show   few 
crimes  against  property  though  many  against  person.    When 
the  mountain-bred  man  comes  down  into  the  plains,  he  brings 
with  him  therefore  certain  qualities  which  make  him  a  for- 
midable competitor  in  the  struggle  for  existence, — the  strong 
muscles,  unjaded  nerves,  iron  purpose,  and  indifference  to 
luxury  bred  in  him  by  the  hard  conditions  of  his  native  en- 
vironment. 

NOTES   TO   CHAPTER  XVI 

j..  Heinrich  von  Treitschke,  PolitiJc,  Vol.  I,  p.  218.     Leipzig,  1897. 

2.  For  full  discussion,  see  H.  E.  Mill,  International  Geography,  pp.  79- 
81.     New  York,  1902. 

3.  J.  Thomson,  Through  Masai  Land,  pp.  78-82,  113-115,  122,  140-141, 
163-167,  406-407.     London,  1885. 

4.  J.  Eussell  Smith,  Plateaus  in  Tropical  America,  in  Keport  of  Eighth 
International  Geographical  Congress,  pp.   829-831.     Washington,   1905. 

5.  Isaiah  Bowman,  The  Distribution  of  Population  in  Bolivia,  Bulletin 
American  Geographical  Society,  pp.  74-78,  Vol.  VII.     1909. 

6.  D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer  East,  p.  157.    London,  1902. 

7.  Eoosevelt,  Winning  of  the  West,  Vol.  I,  pp.  52-56.    New  York,  1895. 
C.  C.  Boyce,  The  Cherokee  Nation  of  Indians,  Fifth  Annual  Eeport  of 
Bureau  of  Ethnology,  pp.  140-143.     Washington,  1887. 

8.  W.  Z.  Eipley,  The  Eaces  of  Europe,  pp.  253-254.     New  York,  1899. 

9.  G.  L.  Gomme,  The  Village  Community,  pp.  72,  75-95.     New  York, 
1890. 

10.  H.  E.  Mill,  International  Geography,  pp.  148,  154,  155.    New  York, 
1902. 

11.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  pp.  204,  207.     London,  1903. 

12.  H.  E.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  304.     New  York,  1902. 

13.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  p.  221.     London,  1903. 

14.  Alfred   Stead,   Japan   by  the   Japanese,   p.   425.     London,    1904. 
Henry  Dyer,  Dai  Nippon,  p.  241.     New  York,  1904. 

15.  Boyd  Winchester,  The  Swiss  Eepublic,  pp.  307-308.     Phila.,  1891. 

16.  Wilhelm  Deecke,  Italy,  pp.  190,  358-361.     London,  1904. 

17.  Elisee  Eeclus,  Europe,  Vol.  I,  p.  284.     New  York,  1882. 

18.  S.  P.  Scott,  History  of  the  Moorish  Empire  in  Spain,  Vol.  Ill,  pp. 
610-613.     Philadelphia,  1904. 


602  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 

19.  M.   Niebuhr,  Travels  Through   Arabia,  Vol.  I,  pp.  290-291,  300. 
Edinburgh,  1792.     S.  M.  Zwemer,  Arabia  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  pp.  57, 
68,  69,  415.     New  York,  1900. 

20.  D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer  East,  pp.  75,  140,  267.    London,  1902. 

21.  E.  F.  Knight,  Where  Three  Empires  Meet,  p.  10.    London,  1897. 

22.  Ibid.,  pp.  312,  460,  463,  468,  475. 

23.  Ibid.,  118,  119,  160,  200. 

24.  Isabella  Bird  Bishop,  The  Yangtze  Valley  and  Beyond,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
176,  183,  294;  Vol.  II,  p.  107.    New  York  and  London,  1900. 

25.  F.  H.  Nichols,  Through  Hidden  Shensi,  pp.  51,  54.     New  York, 
1902. 

26.  E.  J.  Payne,  History  of  the  New  World,  Vol.  I,  pp.  375-378.  Oxford, 
1892. 

27.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  II,  p.  162.    London,  1896-1898. 

28.  E.  F.  Knight,  Where  Three  Empires  Meet,  pp.  86-87.     London, 
1897. 

29.  A.  B.  Ellis,  West  African  Islands,  p.  248.    London,  1885. 

30.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  254.    London,  1896-1898. 

31.  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  426-428. 

32.  A.  R.  Wallace,  The  Malay  Archipelago,  p.  122.     New  York,  1869. 

33.  Ibid.,  174. 

34.  W.  E.  Griffis,  The  Mikado 's  Empire,  Vol.  I,  p.  90.  New  York,  1903. 

35.  Census  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  Vol.  I,  pp.  458,  541,  543 ;  and  Vol. 
IV,  pp.  88-89.     Washington,  1905.     Gazetteer  of  the  Philippine  Islands, 
photographs,  pp.  352-353.     Washington,  1902. 

36.  Boyd  Alexander,  From  the  Niger  to  the  Nile,  Vol.  I,  pp.  96-97. 
London,  1907. 

37.  V.  L.  Cameron,  Across  Africa,  p.  221.     London,  1885. 

38.  Count  Gleichen,  The  Egyptian   Sudan,  Vol.  I,  p.    190.     London, 
1905. 

39.  Prescott,  Conquest  of  Peru,  Vol.  I,  pp.  134-136.    New  York,  1848. 

40.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  II,  p.  176.    London,  1896-1898. 

41.  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  p.  176. 

42.  E.  J.  Payne,  History  of  the  New  World,  Vol.  I,  p.  377.     Oxford, 
1892. 

43.  Pallas,  Travels  Through  the  Southern  Provinces  of  Russia,  Vol.  II, 
p.  346.     London,  1812. 

44.  B.  H.  Baden-Powell,  The  Indian  Village  Community,  pp.  57,  58,  61. 
London,  1896. 

45.  E.  F.  Knight,  Where  Three  Empires  Meet,  pp.  148,  151,  154,  163, 
203,  238  et  passim.    London,  1897. 

46.  Ibid.,  70-73. 

47.  F.  H.  Nichols,  Through  Hidden  Shensi,  p.  52.    New  York,  1902. 

48.  Isabella  Bird  Bishop,  The  Yangtze  Valley  and  Beyond,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
163,  176;  Vol.  II,  pp.  126,  147.     New  York  and  London,  1900. 

49.  Boyd  Winchester,  The  Swiss  Republic,  p.  307.     Philadelphia,  1891. 

50.  Wilhelm  Roscher,  National-oekonomik  dcs  Ackerbaues,  p.  656,  Note 
1.     Stuttgart,  1888. 

51.  Norway,  Official   Publication,  p.  307.  Christiania,   1900. 

52.  Roscher,    Nalional-ockonomik   des    Ackerbaues,    p.    656,    Note    4. 
Stuttgart,  1888. 

53.  Norway,  Official  Publication,  p.  325.     Christiania,  1900. 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  603 

54.  Koscher,    National-oekonomik    des   Ackerbaues,    p.    657,    Note    7. 
Stuttgart,  1888. 

55.  Ibid.,  p.  655,  Note  1. 

56.  Norway,  Official  Publication,  p.  310.     Christiania,  1900. 

57.  B.   H.   Baden-Powell,   The  Indian  Village  Community,   pp.   58-59. 
London,  1896. 

58.  McCullough,  Geographical  Dictionary,  Article  Nepal.    J.  C.  White, 
Journeys  in  Bhutan,  Geographical  Journal,  Vol.  35,  p.  33.    London,  1910. 

59.  E.  F.  Knight,  Where  Three  Empires  Meet,  p.  10.    London,  1897. 

60.  Boyd  Winchester,  The  Swiss  Kepublic,  p.  310.     Philadelphia,  1891. 
A.  von  Miaskowski,  Die  schiceizerische  Allmend,  pp.  88-89,  175,  178,  179, 
198.     Stoats-  und  'socialwissenschaftliche  Forschungen,  Vol.  II,  No.  4, 
Leipzig,  1879. 

61.  E.    F.    Knight,   Where   Three   Empires   Meet,    pp.    98,   248,   329.. 
London,  1897. 

62.  Isabella  Bird  Bishop,  The  Yangtze  Valley  and  Beyond,  Vol.  II,  pp. 
181,  187,  224.  London  and  New  York,  1900. 

63.  Carter  Harrison,  A  Eace  with  the  Sun,  p.  63.     New  York,  1889. 

64.  Boyd  Winchester,  The  Swiss  Kepublic,  pp.  325-327.     Phila.  1891. 

65.  A    von    Miaskowski,    Die    schwcizerische    Allmend,    pp.    164-166. 
Stoats-  und  socialwissenschaftliche  Forschungen,  Vol.  II,  No.  4.   Leipzig, 
1879. 

66.  Norway,  Official  Publication,  p.  325.     Christiania,  1900. 

67.  Ibid.,  p.  59. 

68.  Eoscher,  National-oekonomik  des  Ackerbaues,  p.  655,  Note  1.  Stutt- 
gart, 1888. 

69.  E.  F.  Knight,  Where  Three  Empires  Meet,  pp.  40,  41,  77.    London, 
1897. 

70.  M.  Hue,  Travels  in  Tartary,  Thibet  and  China  in  1846,  Vol.  II,  pp. 
151-156.     Chicago,  1898. 

71.  W.  W.  Eockhill,  The  Land  of  the  Lamas,  p.  228.    New  York,  1891. 

72.  Perceval  Landon,   The  Opening  of  Tibet,  pp.   110,   111,   205-206. 
New  York,  1905. 

73.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  pp.  197,  248.     London,  1903. 

74.  Wilhelm  Deecke,  Italy,  p.  220.     London,  1904. 

75.  J.  Partsch,  Central  Europe,  pp.  269-270.    London,  1903. 

76.  Malthus,  Essay  on  Population,  Book  II,  chap.  V. 

77.  Cliffe  Leslie,  Auvergne,  Fortnightly  Review,  p.  741,  Vol.  XVI.  1874. 

78.  Wilhelm  Deecke,  Italy,  pp.  243,  409.     London,  1904. 

79.  Eatzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  252.     London,  1896-1898. 

80.  L.  Higgin,  Spanish  Life  in  Town  and  Country,  pp.  27,  29,  292-293. 
New  York,  1902. 

81.  James  Bryce,  Impressions  of  South  Africa,  p.  350.     New  York, 
1897. 

82.  Von  Bremer,  Land  of  the  Battaks,  Geographical  Journal,  Vol.  VII, 
pp.  76-80.     London,  1896. 

83.  B.  Winchester,  The  Swiss  Eepublic,  pp.  229-232.     Phila.,  1891. 

84.  James  Logan,  The  Scottish  Gael  or  Celtic  Manners,  p.  78.     Hart- 
ford, 1849. 

85.  Indian  Census  for  1901,  Vol.  I,  Part  I,  p.  93,  by  Eisley  and  Gait. 
Calcutta,  1903. 

86.  Elisee  Eeclus,  Europe,  Vol.  I,  p.  219.    New  York,  1882. 


804  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN   ENVIRONMENT 

87.  Heinrich  von  Treitschke,  Politik,  Vol.  I,  p.  228.     Leipzig,  1897. 

88.  Archibald  Little,  The  Far  East,  pp.  47,  167.     Oxford,  1905. 

89.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  243.    New  York,  1902. 

90.  Malthus,  Essay  on  Population,  Book  II,  chap.  I. 

91.  Cliffe  Leslie,  Auvergne,  Fortnightly  Review,  Vol.  XVI,  pp.  741-742. 
1874. 

92.  Oscar  P.  Crosby,  Tibet  and  Turkestan,  pp.  153,  156.    London  and 
New  York,  1905.     A.  Little,  The  Far  East,  p.  217.    Oxford,  1905. 

93.  W.  W.  Bockhill,  The  Land  of  the  Lamas,  p.  227.    New  York,  1891. 

94.  E.  F.  Knight,  Where  Three  Empires  Meet,  p.  218.     London,  1897. 

95.  W.  W.  Eockhill,  The  Land  of  the  Lamas,  p.  212.    New  York,  1891. 

96.  C.  A.  Sherring,  Western  Tibet  and  the  British  Borderland,  p.  188. 
London,  1906. 

97.  Westermarck,  History  of  Human  Marriage,  pp.  451,  452.    London, 
1891. 

98.  Strabo,  Book  XVI,  chap.  IV,  25. 

99.  For  authorities,  see  Westermarck,  History  of  Human  Marriage,  pp. 
452-455.     London,  1891.     McLennan,  Primitive  Marriage,  pp.   178-179, 
184-189.      Edinburgh,    1865.      C.   A.    Sherring,   Western   Tibet   and   the 
British  Borderland,  pp.  14,  15,  88-89,  177,  305.     London,  1906. 

100.  Spencer,  Principles  of  Sociology,  Vol.  I,  pp.  646-649.    New  York, 
1887. 

101.  W.   H.   B.   Rivers,   The  Todas,   incorporated  in   W.   I.   Thomas' 
Source  Book  for  Social  Origins,  pp.  485-486.    Chicago,  1909. 

102.  Westermarck,  History  of  Human  Marriage,  p.  463.    London,  1891. 

103.  Sir  Thomas  Holdich,  India,  pp.  216,  217.    London,  1905. 

104.  W.  W.  Eockhill,  The  Land  of  the  Lamas,  pp.  211-212.    New  York, 
1891. 

105.  Oscar  P.  Crosby,  Tibet  and  Turkestan,  pp.  148-151.     New  York 
and  London,  1905. 

106.  Westermarck,  History  of  Human  Marriage,  pp.  470-483,  547-548. 
London,  1891. 

107.  Perceval  Landon,  The  Opening  of  Tibet,  p.  193.    New  York,  1905. 

108.  E.  F.  Knight,  Where  Three  Empires  Meet,  pp.  137-141.    London, 
1897. 

109.  Strabo,  Book  IV,  chap.  VI,  6,  7,  8,  10. 

110.  Ibid.,  Book  III,  chap.  Ill,  5,  7,  8. 

111.  Ibid.,  Book  VII,  chap.  VI,  1. 

112.  Ibid.,  Book  XI,  chap.  XII,  4;  chap.  XIII,  3,  6. 

113.  E.  F.  Knight,  Where  Three  Empires  Meet,  pp.  346-349,  460-464. 
London,  1897. 

114.  Ibid.,  280-282. 

115.  Sir  Thomas  Holdich,  India,  p.  33.     London,  1905. 

116.  Ibid.,  219-221. 

117.  Pallas,  Travels  Through  the  Southern  Provinces  of  Russia,  Vol.  I, 
pp.  386-390,  406-407.     London,  1812. 

118.  D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer  East,  p.  246-249.    London,  1902. 

119.  M.  Hue,  Travels  in  Tartary,  Thibet,  and  China  in  1846,  Vol.  II,  pp. 
flO-93,  100-101,  129-132.     Chicago,  1898. 

120.  Hans  Helmolt,  History  of  the  World,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  131,  133-135. 
New  York  and  London,  1902-1906. 

121.  Strabo,  Book  V,  chap.  IV,  II. 


INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT  605 

122.  Article  Nepal,  Encyclopaedia  Britannica. 

123.  C.  Keller,  Madagascar,  pp.  24-26,  72,  85.    London,  1901. 

124.  E.   F.    Knight,   Where   Three   Empires   Meet,   pp.    280,   288-289. 
London,  1897. 

125.  Walter  K.  Kelly,  History  of  Eussia,  Vol.  II,  p.  392.  London,  1881. 

126.  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  Vol.  II,  p.  441.     New  York,  1859. 

127.  Ibid.,  Vol.  X,"  pp.  208,  215,  224-225. 

128.  D.  G.  Hogarth,  The  Nearer  East,  p.  235.     London,  1902. 

129.  Henry  Buckle,  History  of  Civilization  in  England,  Vol.  II,  pp.  125, 
136-137.     New  York,  1871. 

130.  W.  K.  Kelly,  History  of  Eussia,  Vol.  II,  p.  394.     London,  1881. 

131.  Pallas,  Travels  Through  the  Southern  Provinces  of  Eussia,  Vol. 
I,  pp.  391,  404-405.     London,  1812. 

132.  H.  Spencer,  A  Visit  to  Andorra,  Fortnightly  Seview,  Vol.  67,  pp. 
53-60.     1897. 

133.  Article  Tyrol,  Encyclopaedia  Britannica. 

134.  Eatzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  253-254.     London,  1896- 
1898. 

135.  H.  J.  Mackinder,  The  Ehine,  pp.  27-31,  47-49,  56,  57.     London, 
1908. 

136.  E.  F.  Knight,  Where  Three  Empires  Meet,  pp.  305-306.     London, 
1897. 

137.  B.  H.  Baden-Powell,  The  Indian  Village  Community,  pp.  136,  143- 
146.    London,  1896. 

138.  D.    G.    Hogarth,    The   Nearer    East,    pp.    229-231,    248,    252-253. 
London,  1902. 

139.  Sir  Thomas  Holdich,  India,  pp.  243-244.     London,   1905. 

140.  Niebuhr,  Travels  Through  Arabia,  Vol.  II,  pp.  50-51.    Edinburgh, 
1792. 

141.  B.  H.  Baden-Powell,  The  Indian  Village  Community,  pp.  40,  47, 
110,  121,  151-154,  159.     London,  1896. 

142.  Captain  J.  Forsythe,  The  Highlands  of  Central  India,  pp.  10-15, 
23-24,  123-125.     London,  1889. 

143.  Ibid.,  6,  7,  10-12,  141-147. 

144.  Angus  Hamilton,  Afghanistan,  pp.  262-268.    New  York,  1906. 

145.  Sir  Thomas  Holdich,  India,  pp.  98-99.     London,  1905. 

146.  Merzbacher,  Aus  den  Hochregionen  des  Kaukasus,  Vol.   I,   pp. 
55-56,  156.     Leipzig,  1901. 

147.  W.  Z.  Eipley,  The  Eaces  of  Europe,  pp.  281-283,  289-290,  map  p. 
285.     New  York,  1899. 

148.  Ibid.,   282. 

149.  Article  Tyrol,  Encyclopaedia  Britannica. 

150.  Archibald  Little,  The  Far  East,  131-132.     Oxford,  1905.     Isabella 
Bird  Bishop,  The  Yangtze  Valley  and  Beyond,  Vol.  II,  132-133,  146-147, 
166,   174,  207-210.     New  York  and  London,  1900.     S.  Wells  Williams, 
The  Middle  Kingdom,  Vol.  I,  p.  43,  New  York,  1904.     J.  Naken,  Die 
Provinz  Kwangtung  und  ihre  Bevolkerung,  Petermanns   Geographische 
Mittheilungen,  Vol.  24,  p.  421.     1878. 

151.  Archibald  Little,  The  Far  East,  pp.  307-308.     Oxford,  1905. 

152.  E.    C.    Semple,   The   Anglo-Saxons   of   the   Kentucky   Mountains, 
Geographical  Journal,  Vol.  XVII,  pp.  588-623.    London,  1901. 


606  INFLUENCES  MOUNTAIN  ENVIRONMENT 

153.  Sir  Thomas  Holdich,  The  Origin  of  the  Kafir  of  th.-  Hindu  Kush, 
Geographical  Journal,  Vol.  VII,  p.  42.    London,  1896. 

154.  George  Adam  Smith,  Historical  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,  pp. 
259-261.     New  York,  1897. 

155.  Isabella  Bird  Bishop,  Korea  and  Her  Neighbors,  pp.  21,  134-135, 
140,  142.    New  York,  1897. 

156.  Article  Waldenses,   Encyclopaedia  Britannica. 


CHAPTEB  XVII 


CLIMATE   enters   fundamentally   into   all   consideration   of 
geographic  influences,  either  by  implication  or  explicitly.     It   f1106  . 
is  a  factor  in  most  physiological  and  psychological  effects  of 


environment.  It  underlies  the  whole  significance  of  zonal 
location,  continental  and  insular.  Large  territorial  areas  are 
favorable  to  improved  variation  in  men  and  animals  partly  be- 
cause they  comprise  a  diversity  of  natural  conditions,  of  which 
a  wide  range  of  climates  forms  one.  This  is  also  one 
advantage  of  a  varied  relief,  especially  in  the  Tropics,  where 
all  the  zones  may  be  compressed  into  a  small  area  on  the 
slopes  of  high  mountains  like  the  Andes  and  Kilimanjaro. 
Climate  fixes  the  boundaries  of  human  habitation  in  Arctic 
latitudes  and  high  altitudes  by  drawing  the  dead-line  to  all 
organic  life.  It  dominates  life  in  steppes  and  torrid  deserts 
as  in  sub-polar  wastes.  It  encourages  intimacy  with  the  sea 
in  tropical  Malays  and  Polynesians,  and  like  a  slave-driver, 
scourges  on  the  fur-clad  Eskimo  to  reap  the  harvest  of  the 
deep.  It  is  always  present  in  that  intricate  balance  of  geo- 
graphic factors  which  produces  a  given  historical  result, 
throwing  its  weight  now  into  one  side  of  the  scales,  now  into 
the  other.  It  underlies  the  production,  distribution  and  ex- 
change of  commodities  derived  from  the  vegetable  and  animal 
kingdoms,  influences  methods  of  agriculture,  and  the  efficiency 
of  human  labor  in  various  industries.1  Hence  it  is  a  potent 
factor  in  the  beginning  and  in  the  evolution  of  civilization, 
so  far  as  this  goes  hand  in  hand  with  economic  development. 

The  foregoing  chapters  have  therefore  been  indirectly  Climate 
concerned  with  climate  to  no  small  degree,  but  they  have  " 
endeavored  to  treat  the  subject  analytically,  showing  climate  ^  ' 
as  working  with  or  against  or  in  some  combination  with  other  graphic 
geographic  factors.  This  course  was  necessary,  because  cli-  factors. 
matic  influences  are  so  conspicuous  and  so  important  that  by 


608 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE 


Direct  and 
indirect 
effects  of 
climate. 


the  older  geographers  like  Montesquieu2  and  others,  they  have 
been  erected  into  a  blanket  theory,  and  made  to  explain  a 
wide  range  of  social  and  historical  phenomena  which  were 
properly  the  effect  of  other  geographic  factors. 

For  a  clear  understanding  of  climatic  influences,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  adhere  to  the  chief  characteristics  of  the  atmosphere, 
such  as  heat  and  cold,  moisture  and  aridity,  and  to  consider 
the  effect  of  zonal  location,  winds  and  relief  in  the  production 
and  distribution  of  these;  also  to  distinguish  between  direct 
and  indirect  results  of  climate,  temporary  and  permanent, 
physiological  and  psychological  ones,  because  the  confusion 
of  these  various  effects  breeds  far-fetched  conclusions.  The 
direct  modification  of  man  by  climate  is  partly  an  a  priori 
assumption,  because  the  incontestable  evidences  of  such  modifi- 
cation are  not  very  numerous,  however  strong  the  probability 
may  be.  The  effect  of  climate  upon  plant  and  animal  life  is 
obvious,  and  immediately  raises  the  assumption  that  man  has 
been  similarly  influenced.  But  there  is  this  difference:  in 
contrast  to  the  helpless  dependence  upon  environment  of  sta- 
tionary plants  and  animals,  whose  range  of  movement  is 
strictly  determined  by  conditions  of  food  and  temperature,  the 
great  mobility  of  man,  combined  with  his  inventiveness,  enables 
him  to  flee  or  seek  almost  any  climatic  condition,  and  to 
emancipate  himself  from  the  full  tyranny  of  climatic  control 
by  substituting  an  indirect  economic  effect  for  a  direct  physi- 
cal effect. 

The  direct  results  of  climate  are  various,  though  some  are 
open  to  the  charge  of  imperfect  proof.  Even  the  relation 
of  nigrescence  to  tropical  heat,  which  seems  to  be  established 
by  the  geographical  distribution  of  negroid  races  in  the  Old 
World,  fails  to  find  support  from  the  facts  of  pigmentation 
among  the  American  Indians  from  Alaska  to  Tierra  del  Fuego. 
Nevertheless  climate  undoubtedly  modifies  many  physiological 
processes  in  individuals  and  peoples,3  affects  their  immunity 
from  certain  classes  of  diseases  and  their  susceptibility  to 
others,  influences  their  temperament,  their  energy,  their  ca- 
pacity for  sustained  or  for  merely  intermittent  effort,  and 
therefore  helps  determine  their  efficiency  as  economic  and 
political  agents. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE  609 

While  producing  these  direct  effects,  climate  also  influences 
man  indirectly  by  controlling  the  wide  range  of  his  life  con- 
ditions dependent  upon  the  plant  and  animal  life  about  him. 
It  dictates  what  crops  he  may  raise,  and  has  it  in  its  power 
to  affect  radically  the  size  of  his  harvest.  It  decides  which 
flocks  and  herds  are  best  suited  to  his  environment,  and  there- 
fore directs  his  pastoral  activities,  whether  he  keeps  reindeer, 
camels,  llamas,  horses  or  horned  cattle.  By  interdicting  both 
agriculture  and  stock-raising,  as  in  Greenland  whose  ice  cap 
leaves  little  surface  free  even  for  reindeer  moss,  it  condemns 
the  inhabitants  forever  to  the  uncertain  subsistence  of  the 
hunter.  Where  it  encourages  the  growth  of  large  forests 
which  harbor  abundant  game  and  yield  abundant  fruits,  as  in 
the  hot,  moist  equatorial  belt  and  on  rainy  mountain  slopes, 
it  prolongs  the  hunter  stage  of  development,  retards  the  ad- 
vance to  agriculture.  Climate  thus  helps  to  influence  the  rate 
and  the  limit  of  cultural  development.  It  determines  in  part 
the  local  supply  of  raw  material  with  which  man  has  to  work, 
and  hence  the  majority  of  his  secondary  activities,  except 
where  these  are  expended  on  mineral  resources.  It  decides 
the  character  of  his  food,  clothing,  and  dwelling,  and  ulti- 
mately of  his  civilization. 

The  very  ground  under  man's  feet,  moreover,  feels  the  Effect  of 
molding  hand  of  climate.  In  one  region  a  former  age  of  ex-  el"™*6 
cessive  cold  has  glaciated  the  surface  and  scoured  off  the  U^K)I 
fertile  loam  down  to  the  underlying  rock,  or  left  the  land 
coated  with  barren  glacial  drift  or  more  productive  clays. 
In  another,  the  cold  still  persists  and  caps  the  land  with  ice 
and  snow,  or,  as  in  the  tundra,  underlays  it  with  a  stratum  of 
frozen  earth,  which  keeps  the  surface  wet  and  chilled  even  in 
the  height  of  summer.  In  yet  other  regions,  abundant  mois- 
ture combined  with  heat  covers  the  ground  with  a  pad  of 
fertile  humus,  while  some  hundred  miles  away  drying  trade 
winds  parch  and  crack  the  steppe  vegetation,  convert  most  of 
its  organic  substance  into  gases,  and  leave  only  a  small 
residue  to  enrich  the  soil.  Rain  itself  modifies  the  relief  of 
the  land,  and  therefore  often  decides  in  a  slow,  cosmic  way 
what  shall  be  the  ultimate  destination  of  its  precious  store 
of  water.  A  heavy  precipitation  on  the  windward  side  of  a 


610 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE 


Climate 
limits  the 
habitable 
area. 


Adapta- 
bility of 
man  to 
climatic 
extremes. 


mountain  range,  by  increasing  the  mechanical  force  of  its  drain- 
age streams,  makes  them  bite  their  way  back  into  the  heart  of 
the  system  and  decapitate  the  rivers  on  the  leeward  side,  thus 
diminishing  the  volume  of  water  left  to  irrigate  the  rainless 
slope.  Thus  the  hydra-headed  Amazon  has  been  spreading 
and  multiplying  its  sources  among  the  Andean  valleys,  to  the 
detriment  of  agriculture  on  the  dry  Pacific  slope;  thus  the 
torrents  of  the  Western  Ghats,  gorged  by  the  monsoon  rains 
from  the  Indian  Ocean,  are  slowly  nipping  off  the  streams  of 
the  ill- watered  Dcccan.  [See  map  page  484.]  All  these 
direct  and  indirect  effects  of  climate  may  combine  to  produce 
ultimate  politico-geographical  results  which  manifest  them- 
selves in  the  expansion,  power  and  permanence  of  states. 

Climatic  conditions  limit  the  habitable  area  of  the  earth. 
This  is  their  most  important  anthropo-geographic  effect.  At 
either  pole  lurks  an  invincible  foe,  with  whom  expanding 
humanity  must  always  reckon,  and  who  brooks  little  en- 
croachment upon  his  territory.  His  weapon  is  the  restriction 
of  organic  life,  without  which  man  cannot  exist.  The  geo- 
graphical boundaries  of  organic  life,  however,  are  wider  than 
those  of  human  life.  The  consequence  of  this  climatic  control, 
therefore,  is  not  only  a  narrowed  distribution  of  the  human 
race,  but  a  concentration  which  intensifies  the  struggle  for 
existence,  forces  the  utilization  of  all  the  available  area,  and 
thereby  in  every  locality  stimulates  adaptation  to  environ- 
ment. 

Man  ranks  among  the  most  adaptable  organic  beings  on  the 
earth.  No  climate  is  absolutely  intolerable  to  him.  Only  the 
absence  of  food  supply  or  of  all  marketable  commodities  will 
exclude  him  from  the  most  inhospitable  region.  His  dwellings 
are  found  from  sea  level  up  to  an  altitude  of  5000  meters  or 
more,  where  the  air  pressure  is  little  over  one  half  that  on  the 
coast.*  Seventeen  per  cent,  of  the  towns  and  cities  of  Bolivia 
are  located  at  an  elevation  above  13,000  feet  (4000  meters), 
while  Aullagas  occupies  a  site  15,700  feet  or  nearly  5000 
meters  above  the  sea.5  Mineral  wealth  explains  these 
high  Bolivian  settlements,  just  as  it  draws  the  Mexican  sul- 
phur miners  to  temporary  residence  in  the  crater  of  Popocate- 
petl at  an  altitude  of  17,787  feet  (5420  meters),  from  their 


611 

permanent  dwellings  a  thousand  meters  below.6  The  laborers 
employed  in  the  construction  of  the  Oroya  railroad  in  Peru 
became  rapidly  accustomed  to  work  in  the  rarefied  air  at  an 
elevation  of  4000  to  4800  meters.  The  trade  routes  over 
the  Andes  and  Himalayan  ranges  often  cross  passes  at  similar 
altitudes;  the  Karakorum  road  mounts  to  18,548  feet  (5,650 
meters).  Yet  these  great  elevations  do  not  prevent  men  going 
their  way  and  doing  the  day's  work,  although  the  unac- 
climated  tenderfoot  is  liable  to  attacks  of  mountain  sickness 
in  consequence  of  the  rarefied  air.7 

Man  makes  himself  at  home  in  any  zone.  The  cold  pole 
of  the  earbh,  so  far  as  recorded  temperatures  show,  is  the 
town  of  Verkhoyansk  in  northeastern  Siberia,  whose  mean 
January  temperature  is  54  F.  below  zero  (  —  48  Centigrade). 
Massawa,  one  of  the  hottest  spots  in  the  furnace  of  Africa 
is  the  capital  of  the  Italian  colony  of  Eritrea.  However,  ex- 
tremes both  of  heat  and  cold  reduce  the  density  of  population, 
the  scale  and  efficiency  of  economic  enterprises.  The  greatest 
events  of  universal  history  and  especially  the  greatest  his- 
torical developments  belong  to  the  North  Temperate  Zone. 
The  decisive  voyages  of  discovery  emanated  thence,  though 
the  needs  of  trade  and  the  steady  winds  of  low  latitudes  com- 
bined to  carry  them  to  the  Tropics.  The  coldest  lands  of  the 
earth  are  either  uninhabited,  like  Spitzenbergen,  or  sparsely 
populated,  like  northern  Siberia.  The  hottest  regions,  also, 
are  far  from  being  so  densely  populated  as  many  temperate 
countries.8  [See  maps  pages  8,  9,  and  612.]  The  fact  that 
they  are  for  the  most  part  dependencies  or  former  colonial 
possessions  of  European  powers  indicates  their  retarded  eco- 
nomic and  political  development.  The  contrast  between  the 
Mongol  Tunguse,  who  lead  the  life  of  hunters  and  herders  in 
Arctic  Siberia,  and  the  related  Manchus,  who  conquered  and 
rule  the  temperate  lands  of  China,  shows  how  climates  help 
differentiate  various  branches  of  the  same  ethnic  stock;  and 
this  contrast  only  parallels  that  between  the  Eskimo  and  Aztec 
offshoots  of  the  American  Indians,  the  Norwegian  and  Italian 
divisions  of  the  white  race. 


The  zonal  location  of  a  country  indicates  roughly  the  de-  by  oceans 
gree  of  heat  which  it  receives  from  the  sun.     It  would  do  this  and  winds. 


612 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE  613 

accurately  if  variations  of  relief,  prevailing  winds  and  prox- 
imity of  the  oceans  did  not  enter  as  disturbing  factors.  Since 
water  heats  and  cools  more  slowly  than  the  land,  the  ocean  is 
a  great  reservoir  of  warmth  in  winter  and  of  cold  in  summer, 
and  exercises  therefore  an  equalizing  effect  upon  the  tempera- 
ture of  the  adjacent  continents,  far  as  these  effects  can  be 
carried  by  the  wind.  The  ocean  is  also  the  great  source  of 
moisture,  and  this,  too,  it  distributes  over  the  land  through 
the  agency  of  the  wind.  Where  warm  ocean  currents,  like  the 
Gulf  Stream  and  Kuro  Siwa,  penetrate  into  temperate  or 
sub-polar  latitudes,  or  where  cool  ones,  like  the  Peruvian  and 
Benguela  Currents  wash  the  coasts  of  tropical  regions,  they 
enhance  the  power  of  the  ocean  and  wind  to  mitigate  the 
extremes  of  temperature  on  land.  The  warm  currents,  more- 
over, loading  the  air  above  them  with  vapor,  provide  a  store 
of  rain  to  the  nearest  wind-swept  land.  Hence  both  the  rain- 
fall and  temperature  of  a  given  country  depend  largely  upon 
its  neighboring  water  and  air  currents,  and  its  accessibility  to 
the  rain-bearing  winds.  If  it  occupies  a  marked  central  posi- 
tion in  temperate  latitudes,  like  eastern  Russia  or  the  Great 
Plains  of  our  semi-arid  West,  it  receives  limited  moisture  and 
suffers  the  extreme  temperatures  of  a  typical  continental 
climate.  The  same  result  follows  if  it  holds  a  distinctly 
peripheral  location,  and  yet  lies  in  the  rain-shadow  of  a 
mountain  barrier,  like  western  Peru,  Patagonia  and  Sweden 
north  of  the  sixtieth  parallel.  [See  map  page  484.] 

Owing  to  the  prevalence  of  westerly  winds  in  the  Temperate  Effect  of 
Zones  and  particularly  in  the  North  Temperate  Zone,  the  ^e 
mean  annual  temperature  is  high  on  the  western  face  of  the  weste 
northern    continents,    but    drops    rapidly    toward   the    east.9 
This  is  especially  true  of  winter  temperatures,  which  even 
near  the  eastern  coast  show  the  severity  of  a  continental  cli- 
mate.    Sitka  and  New  York,  Trondhjem  and  Peking  have  the 
same  mean  January  temperatures,  though  Peking  lies  in  about 
the  latitude   of   Madrid,   over  twenty-three   degrees    farther 
south. 

Europe's  location  in  the  path  of  the  North  Atlantic  wester- 
lies, swept  by  winds  from  a  small  and  narrow  ocean  which 
has  been  super-heated  by  the  powerful  Gulf  Stream,  secures 


614  TIIK  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE 

for  that  continent  a  more  equable  climate  and  milder  winters 
than  corresponding  latitudes  on  the  western  coasts  of  North 
America,  whose  winds  from  the  wide  Pacific  are  not  so  warm.10 
Moreover,  a  coastal  rampart  of  mountains  from  Alaska 
to  Mexico  restricts  the  beneficial  influences  of  the  Pacific 
climate  to  a  narrow  seaboard,  excludes  them  from  the  vast 
interior,  which  by  reason  of  cold  or  aridity  or  both  must  for- 
ever renounce  great  economic  or  historical  significance,  unless 
its  mineral  resources  developed  unsuspected  importance.  In 
Europe,  the  absence  of  mountain  barriers  across  the  course 
of  these  westerly  winds  from  Norway  to  central  Spain,  and  the 
unobstructed  avenue  offered  to  them  by  the  Mediterranean 
Sea  during  fall  and  winter,  enable  all  the  Atlantic's  mitiga- 
ting influences  of  warmth  and  moisture  to  penetrate  inland, 
and  temper  the  climate  of  Europe  as  far  east  as  St.  Peters- 
burg and  Constantinople.  Thus  several  factors  have  combined 
to  give  the  western  half  of  Europe  an  extraordinarily  favor- 
able climate.  They  have  therefore  greatly  broadened  its  zone 
of  historical  intensity  toward  the  north,  pushed  it  up  to  the 
sixtieth  parallel,  while  the  corresponding  zone  in  eastern 
Asia  finds  its  northern  limit  at  the  fortieth  degree. 

Rainfall.  Moisture    and    warmth    are    essential    to    all    that    life 

upon  which  human  existence  depends.  Hence  temperature 
and  rainfall  are  together  the  most  important  natural 
assets  of  a  country,  because  of  their  influence  upon  its  pro- 
ductivity. The  grazing  capacity  and  wheat  yield  of  southern 
Australia  increase  almost  regularly  with  every  added  inch  of 
rainfall.11  The  map  of  population  for  the  Empire  of  India 
clearly  shows  that  a  high  degree  of  density  accompanies  a 
high  and  certain  rainfall.  Exceptions  occur  only  where  hilly 
or  mountainous  tracts  offer  scant  arable  areas,  or  where 
plains  and  valleys  are  sparsely  populated  owing  to  po- 
litical troubles  or  unhealthiness.  Nearly  three-tenths  of  the 
population  are  found  crowded  together  on  the  one-tenth  of 
India's  level  territory  which  is  blessed  with  a  rainfall  above 
the  average  for  the  country.12  Deserts  which  yield  nothing 
are  purely  climatic  phenomena.  Steppes  which  facilitate  the 
historical  movement,  and  forests  which  block  it,  are  products 
of  scant  or  ample  precipitation.  The  zonal  distribution  of 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE  615 

rainfall,  with  its  maxima  in  the  Tropics  and  the  Temperate 
Zones,  and  its  minima  in  the  trade-wind  belts  and  polar  re- 
gions, reinforces  and  emphasizes  the  influence  of  temperature 
in  determining  certain  great  cultural  and  economic  zones. 

In  equatorial  regions,  which  have  an  abundant  rainfall 
throughout  the  year,  agriculture  is  directed  toward  fruits 
and  roots ;  only  in  certain  districts  can  it  include  cereals,  and 
then  only  rice  and  maize.  The  temperate  grains  demand 
some  dry  summer  weeks  for  their  maturity.  Excessive  mois- 
ture in  Ireland  has  practically  excluded  wheat-growing,  which 
in  England  and  Scotland  also  is  restricted  chiefly  to  the  drier 
eastern  counties.13  It  thrives,  on  the  other  hand,  in  Manitoba 
and  the  Red  River  region  even  with  a  short  season  of  scant 
rainfall,  because  this  comes  in  the  spring  when  moisture  is 
most  needed.1*  Most  important  to  man,  therefore,  is 
the  question  how  and  when  the  rainfall  is  distributed,  and 
with  what  regularity  it  comes.  Monsoon  and  trade-wind 
districts  labor  under  the  disadvantage  of  a  wet  and  dry  sea- 
son, and  a  variability  which  brings  tragic  results,  since  it 
easily  reduces  a  barely  adequate  rainfall  to  disastrous 
drought.  These  are  the  lands  where  wind  and  weather  lord 
it  over  man.  If  the  rains  hold  off  too  long,  or  stop  too  soon, 
or  withhold  even  a  small  portion  of  their  accustomed  gift, 
famine  stalks  abroad. 

Temperature,  the  other  important  element  of  climate,  Temper- 
depends  primarily  upon  zonal  location,  which  has  far 
different  historical  results  from  central  and  peripheral  loca-  jocation 
tion,  continental  and  insular.  It  determines  the  amount  of 
heat  received  from  the  sun,  though  air  and  ocean  currents 
may  redistribute  that  heat  within  certain  limits,  and  humidity 
or  aridity  modify  its  effects.  Still  zonal  distinctions  remain. 
The  great  climatic  regions  of  the  earth,  like  the  hot,  wet 
equatorial  belt  or  the  warm,  dry  trade-wind  belts  or  the  cool, 
well-watered  temperate  zones,  constitute,  through  the  medium 
of  their  economic  products  and  their  climatically  imposed 
methods  of  production,  so  many  socio-political  areas,  regard- 
less of  ethnic  and  political  boundaries.  The  Berber  nomads 
of  the  northern  Sahara  live  much  as  the  Semitic  Bedouins  of 
the  Syrian  desert  or  the  Turkoman  stock  of  arid  Turkestan. 


616 


Reactions 
of  con- 
trasted 
zones. 


Temperate 
products 
from 
tropical 

high- 


They  have  the  same  tribal  government,  the  same  scattered 
distribution  in  small  groups,  the  same  economic  basis  of  sub- 
sistence, though  of  different  races  and  dominated  respect- 
ively by  France,  Turkey  and  Russia.  The  history  of  the 
tropical  Antilles  has  in  both  its  economic  and  political 
features  paralleled  that  of  the  East  Indies  since  the  early 
16th  century.  Temperate  South  America  promises  to  follow 
in  the  historical  footsteps  of  temperate  North  America,  South 
Africa  in  those  of  Europe  and  temperate  Australia. 

While  people  of  the  same  latitude  live  approximately  under 
the  same  temperature  conditions,  those  of  contrasted  zones 
are  subjected  to  markedly  different  influences.  They  develop 
different  degrees  of  civilization,  wealth,  economic  efficiency, 
and  density  of  population ;  hence  they  give  rise  to  great  his- 
torical movements  in  the  form  of  migration,  conquest,  coloni- 
zation, and  commerce,  which,  like  convection  currents,  seek  to 
equalize  the  differences  and  reach  an  equilibrium.  Nature  has 
fixed  the  mutual  destiny  of  tropical  and  temperate  zones, 
for  instance,  as  complementary  trade  regions.  The  hot  belt 
produces  numerous  things  that  can  never  grow  in  colder 
countries,  while  a  much  shorter  list  of  products,  coupled, 
however,  with  greater  industrial  efficiency,  is  restricted  to  the 
Temperate  Zone.  This  explains  the  enormous  importance  of 
the  East  Indian  trade  for  Europe  in  ancient  and  medieval 
times,  the  value  of  tropical  possessions  for  commercial  coun- 
tries like  England  and  Holland.  It  throws  light  upon  the 
persistence  of  the  tropical  plantation  system  in  the  Dutch 
East  Indies  and  republican  Mexico,  as  formerly  in  the  sugar 
and  cotton  fields  of  the  Southern  States,  with  its  relentless 
grip  upon  the  throat  of  national  life  in  hot  lands. 

Tropical  regions,  however,  may  profit  by  the  fact  that 
their  mountains  and  plateaus  permit  the  cultivation  of  tem- 
perate crops.  India  during  the  last  century  has  introduced 
tea  culture  extensively  on  the  Assam  and  Nilgiri  Hills,  and  in 
the  Himalayan  valleys  up  to  an  altitude  of  7000  feet.15  Be- 
sides this  temperate  product,  it  has  put  large  areas  into 
cotton,  chiefly  in  the  peninsular  plateau  of  the  Deccan,  and 
by  means  of  these  two  crops  has  caused  a  considerable  read- 
justment in  world  commerce.18  Nevertheless,  here  the  infringe- 


617 

ment  of  the  principle  of  tropical  production  in  the  torrid  zone 
is  after  all  slight.  In  tropical  America,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  case  is  quite  different;  this  region  presents  an  interesting 
paradox  in  relation  to  its  foreign  commerce.  Here  the  high- 
lands are  the  chief  seats  of  population.  They  contain, 
moreover,  the  most  industrious  and  intelligent  native  stock, 
due  to  geographical  and  historical  causes  running  back  into 
the  ancient  civilizations,  as  well  as  the  largest  proportions  of 
immigrant  Europeans.  This  is  true  not  only  of  the 
Cordilleran  states  from  northern  Mexico  to  the  borders  of 
Chile,  but  also  of  Brazil,  whose  center  of  population  falls  on 
the  plateau  behind  Rio  de  Janeiro  and  Santos.  The  isolation 
of  these  high  plateaus  excludes  them  to  a  serious  extent  from 
foreign  trade,  while  their  great  altitude  permits  only  tem- 
perate products,  with  the  exception  of  sub-tropical  coffee, 
which  is  their  only  crop  meeting  a  great  demand.  The 
world  wants,  on  the  other  hand,  the  long  list  of  lowland 
tropical  exports  which  torrid  America  furnishes  as  yet  in 
inadequate  amounts,  owing  to  the  lack  of  an  industrious  and 
abundant  lowland  population.  Commerce  will  eventually  ex- 
perience a  readjustment  in  these  localities  to  the  natural 
basis  of  tropical  production;  but  how  soon  or  how  effectively 
this  change  will  take  place  depends  upon  the  question  of  im- 
migration of  foreign  tropical  peoples,  or  the  more  difficult 
problem  of  white  acclimatization.1' 

Despite  some  purely  climatological  objections,   anthropo-  isothermal 
geography  finds  the  division  of  climatic  zones  according  to  lines  in 
certain  isothermal  lines  of  mean  annual  temperature  the  most  anthropo- 
expedient  one  for  its  purpose.     The  hot  zone  may  be  taken  as 
the  belt  north  and  south  of  the  equator  enclosed  between  the 
annual  isotherms  of  20°  C.  (68°  F.)     These  hold  a  course 
generally  far  outside  the  two  tropics,  and  in  the  northern 
continents    frequently   reach  the   thirty-fifth   parallel.      The 
temperate  climatic  zones  extend  from  the  annual  isotherm  of 
20°  C.  to  that  of  0°  C.  (32°  F.),  which  bears  little  relation 
to  the  polar  circles  forming  the  limits  of  the  solar  Temper- 
ate   Zone.      The    north    temperate    climatic    zone    has    been 
further  sub-divided  along  the  annual  isotherm  of  5°  C.  (41° 
F.),   distinguishing  thus    the   warmer    southern   belt,    which 


618 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE 


Historical 
effect  of 
compressed 
isotherms. 


forms  preeminently  the  zone  of  greatest  historical  intensity. 
The  areas  beyond  the  annual  isotherms  of  0°  C.  belong  to  the 
barren  cold  zones.  [See  map  page  G12.] 

This  isothermal  division  of  the  climatic  zones  is  abundantly 
justified,  because  the  duration  of  a  given  degree  of  heat  or 
cold  in  any  region  is  a  dominant  factor  in  its  human,  anim.'il, 
and  plant  life.  A  map  of  the  mean  annual  isotherms  of  the 
earth  is  therefore  eloquent  of  the  relation  between  historical 
development  and  this  one  phase  of  climate.  Where  the  lines 
run  far  apart,  they  enclose  extensive  areas  of  similar  tempera- 
ture; and  where  they  approach,  they  group  together  regions 
of  contrasted  temperatures.  The  compression  of  climatic 
differences  into  a  small  area  enlivens  and  accentuates  the 
process  of  historical  development.  It  produces  the  same  sort 
of  effect  as  the  proximity  of  contrasted  reliefs.  Nowhere 
else  in  the  world  do  the  tropical  and  frigid  climatic  areas, 
as  defined  on  the  north  and  south  by  the  annual  isothermal 
lines  of  20°  C.  and  0°  C.  respectively,  lie  so  near  together 
as  in  Labrador  and  northern  Florida.  Separated  here  by 
only  twenty  degrees  of  latitude,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
Atlantic  they  diverge  so  sharply  as  to  include  the  whole 
western  face  of  Europe,  from  Hammerfest  and  the  North 
Cape  down  to  the  Canary  Islands  and  the  crest  of  the  Atlas 
Mountains  in  Africa,  a  stretch  of  forty-two  degrees  of  lati- 
tude. This  approximation  of  contrasted  climatic  districts  in 
North  America  was  an  immense  force  in  stimulating  the  early 
economic  development  of  the  Thirteen  Colonies,  and  in  matur- 
ing them  to  the  point  of  political  autonomy.  It  gave  New 
England  commerce  command  of  a  nearby  tropical  trade  in  the 
West  Indies,  of  sub-tropical  products  in  the  southern  colonies, 
in  close  proximity  to  all  the  contrasted  products  of  a  cold 
climate — dense  northern  forests  for  naval  stores  and  lumber, 
and  an  inexhaustible  supply  of  fish  from  polar  currents, 
which  met  a  strong  demand  in  Europe  and  the  Antilles.  The 
sudden  southward  drop  of  the  0°  C.  annual  isothermal  line 
toward  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Great  Lakes  brought  the 
northwestern  fur  trade  to  the  back  gate  of  New  York,  where 
it  opened  on  the  Mohawk  and  upper  Hudson,  and  brought 
prosperity  to  the  young  colony.  Even  to-day  the  center  of 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE  619 

collection  for  the  Canadian  fur  fields  is  Quebec,  located  at 
47°  north  latitude,  while  the  corresponding  point  of  concen- 
tration in  Europe  for  the  furs  of  Russia  and  Siberia  is 
Nizhni-Novgorod,  which  lies  ten  degrees  farther  north.18 

This  compression  of  the  isotherms  emphasizes  the  differ-  Effect  of 
ences  of  national  characters  produced  in  part  by  dissimilar  slight  cli- 
climatic  conditions.  Contrasts  in  temperament,  manner  of  matic  dif- 
life,  and  point  of  view,  like  that  between  the  New  Englander 
and  Virginian,  Chilean  and  Bolivian  in  the  Americas,  Breton 
and  Provenfal  in  France,  Castilian  and  Andalusian  in  Spain, 
Gurkha  and  Bengali  in  India,  seem  to  bleach  out  when  they 
are  located  far  apart,  owing  to  many  grades  of  transition 
between ;  but  they  become  striking,  stimulating,  productive 
of  important  economic  and  political  results,  when  close  jux- 
taposition enables  them  to  react  sharply  one  upon  the  other. 
In  effecting  these  nice  differentiations  of  local  types,  climate 
is  nearly  always  one  of  the  factors  at  work,  emphasizing 
perhaps  an  existing  ethnic  difference.  Even  the  slight  vari- 
ations of  temperature  to  be  found  in  the  same  zone  or  the 
same  climatic  region  produce  distinct  results,  especially 
where  they  are  harnessed,  as  is  usually  the  case,  with  some 
other  geographic  condition  of  relief,  area  or  soil,  pulling  in 
the  same  direction.  Mexico,  Peru,  Italy,  Switzerland,  Greece 
and  Asia  Minor,  with  its  high  plateau  interior  and  its  con- 
trasted Euxine  and  Aegean  coasts,  represent  each  a  complex 
of  climatic  differences,  which,  reinforced  by  other  geographic 
factors,  have  made  in  these  regions  a  polychrome  picture  of 
national  life. 

Climatic  contrasts  aid  differentiation   also  by  influencing  Effect  of 
both   natural   and   artificial   selection   in   the    distribution   of  climate 
peoples.      This   effect  is   conspicuous   in  the  distribution   of  uP°n  d*8" 
immigrants  in  all  colonial  lands  like  Africa,  South  America       . 
and  in  every  part  of  the  United  States.18     The  warm,  moist 
air  of  the  Gulf  and  South  Atlantic  States  is  attracting  back 
to  the  congenial  habitat  of  the  "black  belt"  the  negroes  of 
the  North,  Avhere,  moreover,  their  numbers  are  being  further 
depleted  by  a   harsh   climate,  which  finds  in  them   a  large 
proportion  of  the  unfit.   The  presence  of  a  big  negro  laboring 
class  in  the  South,  itself  primarily  a  result  of  climate,  has  long 


620  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE 

served  to  exclude  foreign  immigration,  which  sought  therefore 
the  unoccupied  lands  and  the  congenial  climate  of  the  more 
bracing  North.  Hence  it  is  both  a  direct  and  indirect  effect 
of  climate  that  the  North  shows  a  large  proportion  of 
aliens,  and  the  white  population  of  the  South  an  almost 
unadulterated  English  stock. 

Climate  The  influence  of  climate  upon  race  temperament,  both  as 

and  race  a  direct  and  indirect  effect,  can  not  be  doubted,  despite  an 
occasional  exception,  like  the  cheery,  genial  Eskimos,  who 
seem  to  carry  in  their  sunny  natures  an  antidote  to  the  cold 
and  poverty  of  their  environment.  In  general  a  close  corre- 
spondence obtains  between  climate  and  temperament.  The 
northern  peoples  of  Europe  are  energetic,  provident,  serious, 
thoughtful  rather  than  emotional,  cautious  rather  than  im- 
pulsive. The  southerners  of  the  sub-tropical  Mediterranean 
basin  are  easy-going,  improvident  except  under  pressing 
necessity,  gay,  emotional,  imaginative,  all  qualities  which 
among  the  negroes  of  the  equatorial  belt  degenerate  into  grave 
racial  faults.  If,  as  many  ethnologists  maintain,  the  blond 
Teutons  of  the  north  are  a  bleached  out  branch  of  the  brunette 
Mediterranean  race,  this  contrast  in  temperament  is  due  to 
climate.  A  comparison  of  northern  and  southern  peoples  of 
the  same  race  and  within  the  same  Temperate  Zone  reveals 
numerous  small  differences  of  nature  and  character,  which 
can  be  traced  back  directly  or  indirectly  to  climatic  differ- 
ences, and  which  mount  up  to  a  considerable  sum  total.  The 
man  of  the  colder  habitat  is  more  domestic,  stays  more  in  his 
home.  Though  he  is  not  necessarily  more  moderate  or  con- 
tinent than  the  southerner,  he  has  to  pay  more  for  his  indul- 
gences, so  he  is  economical  in  expenditures.  With  the  south- 
erner it  is  "easy  come,  easy  go."  He  therefore  suffers  more 
frequently  in  a  crisis.  The  low  cost  of  living  keeps  down 
his  wages,  so  that  as  a  laborer  he  is  poorly  paid.  This  fact, 
together  with  his  improvidence,  tends  to  swell  the  proletariat 
in  warm  countries  of  the  Temperate  Zone ;  and  though  here  it 
does  not  produce  the  distressing  impression  of  a  proletariat  in 
Dublin  or  Liverpool  or  Boston,  it  is  always  degrading.  It 
levels  society  and  economic  status  downward,  while  in  the 
cooler  countries  of  the  Temperate  Zone,  the  process  is  upward. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE  621 

The  laborer  of  the  north,  owing  to  his  providence  and  larger 
profits,  which  render  small  economies  possible,  is  constantly 
recruited  into  the  class  of  the  capitalist. 

Everywhere  a  cold  climate  puts  a  steadying  hand  on  the  Contrasted 
human  heart  and  brain.  It  gives  an  autumn  tinge  to  life,  tempera- 
Among  the  folk  of  wanner  lands  eternal  spring  holds  sway.  n 
National  life  and  temperament  have  the  buoyancy  and  nation 
thoughtlessness  of  childhood,  its  charm  and  its  weakness. 
These  distinctions  and  contrasts  meet  us  everywhere.  The 
southern  Chinese,  and  especially  the  Cantonese,  is  more  irre- 
sponsible and  hot-blooded  than  the  Celestial  of  the  north, 
though  the  bitter  struggle  for  existence  in  the  over-crowded 
Kwangtung  province  has  made  him  quite  as  industrious ;  but 
on  his  holidays  he  takes  his  pleasure  in  singing,  gambling, 
and  various  forms  of  dissipation.  The  southern  Russian 
is  described  as  more  light-hearted  than  his  kinsman  of  the 
bleaker  north,  though  both  are  touched  with  the  melancholy 
of  the  Slav.  In  this  case,  however,  the  question  immediately 
arises,  how  far  the  dweller  of  the  southern  wheat  lands  owes 
his  happy  disposition  to  the  easy  conditions  of  life  in  the 
fertile  Ukraine,  as  opposed  to  the  fiercer  struggle  for  sub- 
sistence in  the  glaciated  lake  and  forest  belt  of  the  north. 
Similar  distinctions  of  climate  and  national  temperament 
exist  in  the  two  sections  of  Germany.  The  contrast  between 
the  energetic,  enterprising,  self-contained  Saxon  of  the  Baltic 
lowland  and  the  genial,  spontaneous  Bavarian  or  Swabian 
is  conspicuous,  though  the  only  geographical  advantage  pos- 
sessed by  the  latter  is  a  warmer  temperature  attended  by  a 
sunnier  sky.  He  contains  in  his  blood  a  considerable  infusion 
of  the  Alpine  stock  and  is  therefore  racially  differentiated 
from  the  northern  Teuton,20  but  this  hardly  accounts  for  the 
difference  of  temperament,  because  the  same  Alpine  stock  is 
plodding,  earnest  and  rather  stolid  on  the  northern  slope  of 
the  Alps,  but  in  the  warm  air  and  sunshine  of  the  southern 
slope,  it  abates  these  qualities  and  conforms  more  nearly  to 
the  Italian  type  of  character.  The  North  Italian,  however, 
presents  a  striking  contrast  to  the  indolent,  irresponsible, 
improvident  citizens  of  Naples,  Calabria  and  Sicily,  who  be- 
long to  the  contrasted  Mediterranean  race,  and  have  been 


622 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE 


Complexity 
of  the  geo- 
graphic 
problem. 


Monotonous 

climatic 

conditions. 


longer  subjected  to  the  relaxing  effects  of  sub-tropical  heat. 

Where  the  climatic  difference  is  small,  it  is  nevertheless 
often  conspicuous  enough  to  eclipse  other  concomitant  factors 
which  are  at  work,  and  hence  to  encourage  the  formation  of 
some  easy  blanket  theory  of  climatic  influences.  But  just 
because  the  difference  is  slight,  all  attending  geographic  and 
ethnic  circumstances  ought  to  be  scrutinized,  to  insure  a 
correct  statement  of  the  geographical  equation.  The  contrast 
between  the  light-hearted,  gracious  peasants  of  warm,  sunny 
Andalusia  and  the  reserved,  almost  morose  inhabitants  of  cool 
and  cloudy  Asturias  is  the  effect  not  only  of  climate  but  of  the 
easy  life  in  a  fertile  river  plain,  opposed  to  the  bitter  struggle 
for  existence  in  the  rough  Cantabrian  Mountains.  Moreover, 
a  strong  infusion  of  Alpine  blood  has  given  this  group  of 
Spanish  mountaineers  the  patience  and  seriousness  which 
characterizes  the  race  in  other  parts  of  continental  Europe."1 
The  conditions  which  have  differentiated  Scotch  from  English 
have  been  climate,  relief,  location,  geologic  composition  of  the 
soil,  and  ethnic  composition  of  the  two  peoples.  The  divergent 
development  of  Northerners  and  Southerners  in  America  arose 
from  contrasts  in  climate,  soil  and  area.  It  was  not  only  the 
enervating  heat  and  moisture  of  the  Southern  States,  but  also 
the  large  extent  of  their  fertile  area  which  necessitated  slave 
labor,  introduced  the  plantation  system,  and  resulted  in  the 
whole  aristocratic  organization  of  society  in  the  South.22 

When  one  type  of  climate  extends  monotonously  over  a 
vast  area,  as  in  Russia,  Siberia,  Central  Asia  or  immense 
tracts  of  Africa,  the  differences  of  temperature  which 
prick  and  stimulate  national  endeavor  in  small  climatic 
districts  here  lose  much  of  their  force.  Their  effects  flatten 
out  into  insignificance,  overwhelmed  by  the  encounter  with  too 
large  a  territory.  All  the  southern  continents  are  handicapped 
by  the  monotony  of  their  zonal  location.  The  map  of  annual 
isotherms  shows  Africa  quite  enclosed  between  the  two  torrid 
lines  of  20°  Centigrade,  except  for  a  narrow  sub-tropical  belt 
along  the  Barbary  coast  in  the  north,  and  in  the  south  an 
equally  narrow  littoral  extending  east  and  north  from  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope.  At  first  glance,  the  large  area  of  South 
Africa  lying  on  the  temperate  side  of  the  Tropic  of  Capricorn 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE  623 

raises  hopes  for  a  rich  economic,  social  and  cultural  develop- 
ment here;  but  these  are  dashed  by  an  examination  of  the 
isotherms.  Excessive  heat  lays  its  retarding  touch  upon  every- 
thing, while  a  prevailing  aridity  (rainfall  less  than  10  inches 
or  25  centimeters),  except  on  the  narrow  windward  slope 
of  the  eastern  mountains,  gives  the  last  touch  of  climatic 
monotony.  The  coastal  belt  of  Cape  Colony  and  Natal  raise 
tropical  and  sub-tropical  products23  like  all  the  rest  of  the 
continent,  while  the  semi-arid  interior  is  committed  with  little 
variations  to  pastoral  life.  [See  maps  pages  484*  and  487.] 
Climatic  monotony,  operating  alone,  would  have  con- 
demned South  Africa  to  poverty  of  development,  and 
will  unquestionably  always  avail  to  impoverish  its  na- 
tional life.  South  African  history  has  been  made  by 
its  mines  and  by  its  location  on  the  original  water  route 
to  India;  the  first  have  dominated  its  economic  develop- 
ment, and  the  latter  has  largely  determined  its  ethnic  ele- 
ments— English,  Dutch,  and  French  Huguenots,  while  the 
magnet  of  the  mines  has  drawn  other  nationalities  and  especi- 
ally a  large  Jewish  contingent  into  the  urban  centers  of  the 
Rand.24  In  the  background  is  the  native  Kaffir  and  Hottentot 
stocks,  whose  blood  filters  into  the  lower  classes  of  the  white 
population.  The  diversity  of  these  ethnic  elements  may 
compensate  in  part  for  the  monotony  of  climatic  conditions, 
which  promise  to  check  differentiation.  However,  climatic 
control  is  here  peculiarly  despotic.  We  see  how  it  has  con- 
verted the  urban  merchants  of  Holland  and  the  skillful  Hugue- 
not artisan  of  France  into  the  crude  pastoral  Boer  of  the 
Transvaal. 

In  contrast  to  South  Africa,  temperate  South  America 
has  an  immense  advantage  in  its  large  area  lying  outside  the 
20° C.  isotherm,  and  in  the  wide  range  of  mean  temperatures 
(from  20°C.  to  5°C.)  found  between  the  Tropic  of  Capricorn 
and  Tierra  del  Fuego.  Climate  and  relief  have  combined  to 
make  the  mouth  of  the  La  Plata  River  the  site  of  the  largest 
city  of  the  southern  hemisphere.  Buenos  Ayres,  with  a  popu- 
lation of  over  a  million,  reflects  its  large  temperate  hinterland.  jj 

Frigid  zones  and  the  Tropics  alike  suffer  from  monotony,  of  Arctic 
the  one  of  cold  and  the  other  of  heat.     The  Arctic  climatic  cold. 


624 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE 


Similarity 
of  cultural 
develop- 
ment. 


belt,  extending  from  the  isotherm  of  0°C.  (32°F.)  to  the  pole, 
includes  inhabited  districts  where  the  mean  annual  temperature 
is  less  than  — 15°C.  (or  5°F.),  as  at  the  Greenland  village  of 
Etah  on  Smith's  Sound  and  the  Siberian  town  of  Verkhoyansk. 
Here  the  ground  is  covered  with  ice  or  snow  most  of  the  year, 
and  permanently  frozen  below  the  surface.  Animal  and 
plant  life  are  reduced  to  a  minimum  on  the  land,  so  that  man, 
with  every  poleward  advance  of  his  thin-strung  settlements,  is 
forced  more  and  more  to  rely  on  the  sea  for  his  food.  Hence 
he  places  his  villages  on  narrow  strips  of  coast,  as  do  the  Norse 
of  Finmarken,  the  Eskimo  and  the  Tunguse  inhabiting  the 
Arctic  rim  of  Asia.  Products  of  marine  animals  make  the 
basis  of  his  domestic  economy.  Farther  inland,  which  means 
farther  south,  all  tribes  live  by  hunting  and  fishing.  The 
Eurasian  Hyperboreans  find  additional  subsistence  in  their 
reindeer  herds,  which  they  pasture  on  the  starchy  lichen  (Cla- 
donia  rangiferina)  of  the  tundra.  [See  maps  pages  103,  153.] 

Though  these  Arctic  folk  are  sprung  from  diverse  race 
stocks,  close  vicinal  location  around  an  enclosed  sea  has 
produced  some  degree  of  blood  relationship.  But  what- 
ever their  origins,  the  harsh  conditions  of  their  life  have  im- 
posed upon  them  all  a  similar  civilization.  All  population  is 
sparse  and  more  or  less  nomadic,  since  agriculture  alone  roots 
settlement.  They  have  the  same  food,  the  same  clothing,  the 
same  types  of  summer  and  winter  dwellings,  whether  it  is 
the  earth  hut  of  the  Eskimo  or  of  the  coast  Lapp,  the  Siberian 
Yukagirs  of  the  Kolima  River,  or  the  Samoyedes  of  north- 
eastern Russia.25  The  spur  of  necessity  has  aroused  their 
ingenuity  to  a  degree  found  nowhere  in  the  drowsy  Tropics  of 
Africa.  Dread  of  cold  led  the  Yakuts  of  the  Lena  Valley  to 
glaze  the  windows  of  their  huts  with  slabs  of  ice,  which  are 
better  nonconductors  of  heat  and  cold,  and  can  be  made  more 
perfectly  air-tight  than  glass.  Hence  these  windows  have  been 
adopted  by  Russian  colonists.  The  Eskimo  devised  the  oil 
lamp,  an  invention  found  nowhere  else  in  primitive  America, 
and  fishing  tackle  so  perfect  that  white  men  coming  to  fish  in 
Arctic  waters  found  it  superior  to  their  own. 

Owing  to  the  inexorable  restriction  of  their  natural  re- 
sources, contact  with  European  commerce  has  impoverished 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE  625 

the  Hyperborean  natives.  It  has  caused  the  rapid  and  ruth- 
less exploitation  of  their  meager  resources,  which  means 
eventual  starvation.  So  long  as  the  Ostyaks,  before  the  coming 
of  the  Russians,  were  sole  masters  of  the  vast  forests  of  the 
Obi  Valley,  they  commanded  a  supply  of  fish  and  fur  animals 
which  sufficed  for  their  sparse  population.  But  the  greed  of 
the  Russian  fish  dealers  and  fur  traders,  and  the  devastating 
work  of  the  lumbermen  have  made  double  war  upon  Ostyak 
sources  of  subsistence.26  The  appearance  of  the  white  man 
in  Alaskan  waters  was  the  signal  for  the  indiscriminate  killing 
of  seal  and  other  marine  animals,  till  the  Eskimo's  supply  of 
food  and  furs  has  been  seriously  invaded,  from  Greenland  to 
the  outermost  Aleutian  Islands.  In  all  this  wide  territory, 
climatic  conditions  forbid  any  substitute  for  the  original 
products,  except  the  domesticated  reindeer  on  the  tundra  of 
the  mainland ;  but  this  would  necessitate  the  transformation 
of  the  Eskimo  from  a  hunting  to  a  pastoral  people.  This 
task  the  government  at  Washington  has  undertaken,  but  with 
scant  success. 

In  contrast  to  the  numerous  indirect  effects  of  a  frigid  Cold 
climate,  no  direct  physiological  effect  can  be  positively  as-  an<^ 
cribed  to  intense  cold.  It  lays  no  bodily  handicap  on  health 
and  energy,  as  does  the  excessive  heat  of  the  Tropics.  The 
coldest  regions  where  tillage  is  possible  are  tolerable  places  of 
residence,  because  their  winters  are  intensely  dry.  That  of 
central  Siberia,  which  is  drier  than  the  driest  desert,  makes 
tent  life  comfortable  in  the  coldest  season,  provided  the  tenter 
be  clad  in  furs.  The  low  temperatures  of  the  Canadian 
Northwest  for  the  same  reason  have  not  repelled  settlers  even 
from  the  Southern  States.  Negroes,  however,  meet  a  climatic 
barrier  in  America  at  the  isotherm  of  5°  Centigrade  (41°  F.). 
They  are  found  in  New  England  and  Nova  Scotia,  generally 
with  a  large  admixture  of  white  blood;  but  there  and  farther 
north  where  the  climate  is  moist  as  well  as  cold,  they  show 
a  fatal  tendency  to  pulmonary  diseases. 

The  acclimatization  of  tropical  people  in  temperate  regions  Tlw  small 
will   never   be   a   question   of   widespread   importance.      The  amount  of 
negroes  were  involuntary  immigrants  to  America,  under  con-  fro?10** 
ditions  that  can  never  recur.      Their  concentration  in  the  e^^ 


626  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLLMATE 

"black  belt,"  where  they  find  the  heat  and  moisture  in  which 
they  thrive,  and  their  climatically  conditioned  exclusion  from 
the  more  northern  states  are  matters  of  local  significance. 
Economic  and  social  retardation  have  kept  the  hot  belt 
relatively  underpopulated.  The  density  map  shows  much 
the  largest  part  of  it  with  a  population  less  than  25 
to  the  square  mile.  Only  the  small  portion  contained 
in  India,  southernmost  China,  and  Java  shows  a  density 
over  125  to  the  square  mile  (or  50  to  the  square  kilo- 
meter). This  density  has  to  rise  to  500  or  more  to  the 
square  mile  before  emigration  begins.  The  would-be  exiles 
then  have  a  wide  choice  of  new  homes  in  other  tropical  lands, 
where  they  find  congenial  climate  and  phases  of  economic 
development  into  which  they  will  fit.  East  Indian  coolies  are 
found  in  Cape  Colony,  Natal,  Zanzibar,  Trinidad,  and  British 
Guiana,  where  they  constitute  38  per  cent,  of  the  population. 
Effects  of  The  redundant  population  of  crowded  western  and  southern 

Europe  also  seek  these  sparsely  inhabited  Tropics,  but  they 
come  heavily  handicapped  by  the  necessity  of  acclimatization. 
They  leave  their  homes  from  Trondhjem  and  Stockholm  in  the 
north  to  the  Mediterranean  in  the  south,  where  the  mean 
annual  temperatures  vary  from  5°  to  17°  C.  (41°  to  63°  F.), 
to  seek  the  Torrid  Zone  which  averages  25°  C.  or  77°  F.  over 
most  of  its  territory.  The  effects  of  a  tropical  climate  are  due 
to  intense  heat,  to  its  long  duration  without  the  respite  con- 
ferred by  a  bracing  winter  season,  and  its  combination  with  the 
high  degree  of  humidity  prevailing  over  most  of  the  Torrid  Zone. 
These  are  conditions  advantageous  to  plant  life,  but  hardly 
favorable  to  human  development.  They  produce  certain 
derangements  in  the  physiological  functions  of  heart,  liver, 
kidneys  and  organs  of  reproduction.  Bodily  temperature 
rises,  while  susceptibility  to  disease  and  rate  of  mortality 
show  an  increase  ominous  for  white  colonization.  The  general 
effect  is  intense  enervation ;  this  starts  a  craving  for  stimu- 
lants and  induces  habits  of  alcoholism  which  are  accountable 
for  many  bodily  ills  usually  attributed  to  direct  climatic  in- 
fluences. Transfer  to  the  Tropics  tends  to  relax  the  mental  and 
moral  fiber,  induces  indolence,  self-indulgences  and  various 
excesses  which  lower  the  physical  tone.27  The  social  control 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE  627 

of  public  opinion  in  the  new  environment  is  weak,  while 
temptation,  due  to  both  climatic  and  social  causes,  is  peculiarly 
strong.  The  presence  of  an  inferior,  more  or  less  servile 
native  population,  relaxes  both  conscience  and  physical  energy 
just  when  both  need  a  tonic.  The  result  is  general  enerva- 
tion, deterioration  both  as  economic  and  political  agents. 

This  is  the  effect  of  climate  which  has  had  the  most  far-  Historical 
reaching  and  persistent  historical  consequences.  Our  study  signifi- 
of  the  historical  movements  of  peoples  in  the  northern  *jj 
hemisphere  revealed  a  steady  influx  from  colder  into  tropical 
and  sub-tropical  lands,  followed  always  by  enervation  and 
loss  of  national  efficiency,  due  partly  to  the  debilitating  heat 
of  the  new  habitat,  partly  to  its  easier  conditions  of  living, 
whether  the  intruders  came  as  conquerors  and  appropriated 
the  fat  of  the  land,  or  as  immigrant  colonists  who  dropped 
into  slack  methods  of  agriculture,  because  rain  and  sun  and 
soil  made  their  reluctant  labor  scarcely  necessary.  Every- 
where in  the  Tropics  the  enervating  effects  of  heat,  moisture, 
and  abundance  make  not  only  the  natives  averse  to  steady 
work,  but  start  the  energetic  European  immigrant  down  the 
same  easy  descent  to  Avernus.  Passing  over  the  deterioration 
of  the  Aryans  in  India,  the  Persians  in  Mesopotamia,  and  the 
Vandals  in  Africa,  we  find  that  modern  instances  show  the 
transformation  to  be  very  rapid.  The  French  who  since 
1715  have  occupied  the  islands  of  Reunion  and  Mauritius 
have  lost  much  of  their  thrift  and  energy,  though  their  new 
homes  lie  just  within  the  southern  tropic,  and  are  blessed 
with  an  oceanic  climate.  Yet  the  volunteer  troops  sent  by 
Reunion  to  aid  in  the  recent  subjugation  of  the  Hovas  in 
Madagascar-  proved  to  be  utterly  useless.28  The  Spaniards 
who  come  to-day  to  Mexico  have  great  energy,  born  of  their 
former  hard  conditions  of  life  in  Spain.  But  their  children 
are  reared  in  a  country  whose  mean  annual  temperature,  even 
on  the  plateau,  exceeds  that  of  Spain  by  10°C.  (or  18°F.), 
a  difference  equal  to  that  between  Mobile  and  New  York,  or 
Madrid  and  Christiania.  Hence  they  are  less  energetic  and 
vigorous,  while  the  third  generation  are  typical  Mexicans  is 
their  easy-going  way  of  life.29  The  Germans  who  recently 
have  colonized  southern  Brazil  in  great  numbers  show  a  similar 


628 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE 


The 

problem 
of  accli- 
matization. 


Historical 
importance 
of  the 
temperate 


deterioration  under  similar  increase  of  mean  annual  tempera- 
ture, combined  with  somewhat  greater  humidity,  which  inten- 
sifies the  debilitating  effects  of  the  heat.  An  investigation 
made  in  1900  by  the  International  Harvester  Company  of 
America  revealed  the  fact  that  the  German  farmer  in  the 
State  of  Santa  Catharina  rarely  cultivated  over  one  acre  of 
grain.30  Much  of  the  iron  in  the  blood  and  conscience  of  the 
New  England  missionary  stock  which  went  to  Hawaii  two 
generations  ago  has  been  dissolved  out  by  the  warm  rain 
and  balmy  air  of  the  islands. 

In  all  these  instances  the  white  race  has  been  successfully 
transplanted.  It  has  domiciled  itself  on  the  borders  of  the 
Tropics  and  has  propagated  its  kind,  though  it  has  abated  some 
of  the  vigorous  qualities  which  characterized  it  in  its  temper- 
ate fatherland.  In  the  real  Tropics  like  India,  Cochin  China, 
the  Malay  Archipelago,  and  Central  Africa,  the  whole  per- 
plexing and  urgent  problem  of  European  colonization  turns 
on  the  difficulty  or  impossibility  of  acclimatization ;  and  this 
in  turn  affects  the  whole  economic,  ethnic  and  political  destiny 
of  present  colonial  holdings.  If  acclimatization  is  impossible, 
the  alternative  is  an  imported  ruling  class,  constantly  inva- 
lided and  as  constantly  renewed,  aided  by  a  similar  commercial 
body  acting  as  superintendents  of  labor;  the  whole  machine  of 
government  and  economic  exploitation  is  supported  by  a 
permanent  servile  native  population,  doing  the  preeminently 
tropical  work  of  agriculture,  which  is  so  fatal  to  the  white 
man  in  a  torrid  climate.  This  means  that  the  conquering  white 
race  of  the  Temperate  Ztone  is  to-be  excluded  by  adverse  climatic 
conditions  from  the  productive  but  undeveloped  Tropics,  unless 
it  consents  to  hybridization,  like  the  Spaniards  and  Portu- 
guese of  tropical  America.  In  that  national  struggle  for 
existence  which  is  a  struggle  for  space,  it  means  an  added 
advantage  for  the  Mediterranean  peoples,  that  they  are  more 
tolerant  of  a  torrid  climate  than  the  blond  Teutons,  whose 
disability  in  this  regard  is  pronounced;  it  means  that  the 
aptitude  of  the  Chinese  for  a  wide  range  of  climatic  accom- 
modation, from  the  Arctic  circle  to  the  equator,  lends  color 
to  "the  yellow  peril." 

In  contrast  to  the  monotonous  extremes  of  climate  in  the 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE  629 

hot  and  cold  zones,  temperate  lands  are  characterized  by  the 
intermediate  degrees  of  annual  temperature  and  marked  sea- 
sonal diversity  which  are  so  favorable  to  human  development. 
In  Arctic  lands  labor  is  paralyzed  by  cold  as  it  is  by  heat  in 
the  enervating  and  overproductive  Tropics.  In  one,  the 
growing  season  is  too  short  and  ill-favored;  in  the  other,  too 
long  to  stimulate  -man  to  sustained  industry.  Hence  the 
Temperate  Zones,  whose  climate  avoids  both  these  extremes 
and  abounds  in  contrasts,  whose  summers  are  productive 
enough  to  supply  food  for  the  winter,  and  whose  winters  give 
both  motive  and  energy  for  the  summer's  work,  are  richer  in 
cultural  possibilities  and  hence  in  historical  importance. 

The  advantage  of  the  Temperate  Zone  is  not  only  its  mod-  Effects  of 
erate  and  adequate  allowance  of  heat,  but  its  contrast  of  contraste<* 
seasons.  Beyond  the  range  of  a  vertical  sun,  grades  of 
temperature  change  rapidly  from  latitude  to  latitude  and 
from  summer  to  winter.  The  seasons  bring  variety  of 
activities,  which  sharply  react  upon  one  another.  Manufact- 
ures were  in  their  origin  chiefly  winter  industries,  as  they 
still  are  in  small  isolated  communities.  The  modern  factory 
system  flourishes  best  in  cooler  parts  of  the  Temperate  Zone, 
where  the  agricultural  demands  of  the  summer,  spreading  over 
a  shorter  period,  leave  a  longer  time  for  winter  work,  and 
where  that  once  long  winter  of  the  Glacial  Period,  by  the 
scouring  action  of  the  ice  cap,  has  reduced  the  fertile  area  of 
the  northern  fields.  The  factory  system  is  also  favored,  as 
Heinrich  von  Treitschke  maintains,  by  the  predominance  of 
cool  or  cold  weather,  which  facilitates  the  concentration  of 
numerous  workmen  in  large  buildings,  and  renders  possible 
long  labor  hours  the  year  round,31 — conditions  unthinkable 
in  a  warm  climate.  The  iron  and  steel  industries  which  have 
grown  up  about  Birmingham,  Alabama,  find  that  the  long 
hot  summers  and  mild  winters  reduce  the  efficiency  of  their 
skilled  labor  imported  from  the  North. 

The  length  of  the  seasons  is  of  conspicuous  importance.  Effects  of 
It  determines,  for  instance,  whether  a  given  climate  permits  !***£&  of 
continuous  field  work  with  summer  and  winter  crops,  whether  8€ 
field  work  is  possible  at  all,  and  how  long  it  is  interrupted 
by  excessive  cold.     Buckle  maintains  that  climate  not  only 


630  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE 

enervates  or  invigorates  man,  but  affects  also  the  constancy 
of  his  work  and  his  capacity  for  sustained  labor  throughout 
the  year.  He  considers  "that  no  people  living  in  a  very  north- 
ern latitude  have  ever  possessed  that  steady  and  unflinching 
industry  for  which  the  inhabitants  of  temperate  regions  are 
remarkable,"  and  assigns  as  a  reason  "that  the  severity  of 
the  weather,  and,  at  some  seasons,  the  deficiency  of  light, 
render  it  impossible  for  the  people  to  continue  their  usual 
out-of-door  employments."  The  result  of  this  he  finds  to  be 
desultory  habits  of  work,  which  help  to  make  the  national 
character  fitful  and  capricious.  He  cites  in  illustration  of 
his  principle  the  people  of  the  Scandinavian  and  Iberian  pen- 
insulas, whom  he  finds  marked  "by  a  certain  instability  and 
fickleness  of  character,"  owing  to  the  fact  that  in  Norway 
and  Sweden  agricultural  labor  experiences  long  interruptions, 
due  to  the  severity  of  the  winter  and  the  shortness  of  the  days  ; 
in  Spain  and  Portugal  owing  to  the  heat  and  drought  of 
summer.32  The  extreme  continental  climate  of  northern 
Effect  of  Russia  with  its  violent  contrast  of  the  seasons,  its  severe  and 
long  win-  protracted  winters,  enables  Leroy-Beaulieu  to  make  a  safer 
ters.  application  of  this  principle  to  the  empire  of  the  Czars,  which, 

unlike  Scandinavia,  feels  no  ameliorating  effect  from  the  mild 
Atlantic  winds  and  commands  no  alternative  industries  like 
dairy  farming,  fisheries,  and  maritime  trade.33  Hence  Leroy- 
Beaulieu  attributes  the  unsystematic,  desultory  habits  of 
work  prevailing  among  the  northern  peasants  to  the  long 
intermission  of  labor  in  winter,  and  to  the  alternation  of  a 
short  period  of  intense  activity  with  a  long  period  of  enforced 
idleness.  He  finds  them  resembling  southern  peoples  in  their 
capacity  for  sudden  spurts  of  energy  rather  than  sustained 
effort,  thinks  them  benumbed  by  the  sloth  of  the  far  north, 
which  is  not  unlike  the  sloth  of  the  south.34 

The  dominant  continental  and  central  location  of  Russia 
enables  its  climatic  extremes  to  operate  with  little  check. 
The  peripheral  location  of  Scandinavia  in  the  path  of  the 
Atlantic  winds  modifies  its  climate  to  a  mild  oceanic  type, 
and  its  dominant  maritime  situation  gives  its  people  the  mani- 
fold resources  of  a  typical  coast  land.  Hence  Buckle's  esti- 
mate of  national  character  in  the  Scandinavian  Peninsula  has 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE  631 

little  basis  as  to  fact  or  cause.  Irregularity  of  agricultural 
labor  does  not  mean  here  cessation  of  all  labor,  and  hence  does 
not  produce  the  far-reaching  effect  ascribed  to  it.  Only 
about  one-third  of  the  Norwegian  population  is  engaged  in 
agriculture.  The  restriction  of  its  arable  and  meadow  land 
to  3  per  cent,  of  the  whole  territory,  and  the  fact  that  a  large 
proportion  of  the  people  are  employed  in  shipping  and  the 
fisheries,35  are  due  to  several  geographic  factors  besides  cli- 
mate. The  same  thing  is  true  of  Sweden  in  a  modified  degree. 

Caution  should  be  exercised  in  drawing  conclusions  from  Complexity 
climate  alone  or  from  only  one  phase  of  its  influence.  The  of  climatic 
duration  and  intensity  of  the  seasons  affects  not  only  the  effects- 
manner  of  work,  but  the  whole  mode  of  life  of  a  people.  On 
the  Yukon,  in  Iceland,  and  the  high  mountain  valleys  of  the 
Alps,  winter  puts  a  check  not  only  upon  out-of-door  labor, 
but  upon  all  public  or  community  life.  Intercourse  stops  or 
is  greatly  restricted.  The  outside  world  drops  away.  In  Ice- 
land, the  law  courts  are  in  session  only  in  summer  when  the 
roads  by  sea  and  land  are  open.  In  the  Kentucky  mountains 
the  district  schools  close  before  Christmas,  when  the  roads 
become  impassable  from  rain  and  snow ;  the  summer  is  the  gala 
time  for  funeral  services,  for  only  then  can  the  preacher  or 
"circuit-rider"  reach  the  graves  made  in  the  winter.  There- 
fore the  funerals  in  one  community  accumulate,  so  to  speak, 
and  finally,  when  leisure  comes  after  the  August  harvest, 
they  make  the  occasion  for  important  social  gatherings.  Much 
of  the  influence  of  winter  lies  in  its  power  to  isolate. 

It  is  the  economic  effects  of  such  periods  of  enforced  idleness 
which  are  most  obvious,  both  in  their  power  to  restrict  na- 
tional wealth  and  keep  down  density  of  population.  When 
long,  they  limit  subsistence  to  the  products  of  a  short  grow- 
ing season,  except  where  local  mining  adds  considerable 
sources  of  revenue.  In  the  Russian  government  of  Yaroslaf, 
located  on  the  northernmost  bend  of  the  Volga  within  the 
agricultural  belt,  and  containing  the  chief  inland  wheat 
market  of  the  Empire,  the  field  labor  of  four  months  must 
support  the  population  for  the  remaining  eight  months  of 
the  year.  The  half  of  Russia  included  in  the  cold  forest  zone 
of  the  north  maintains  meagerly  a  sparse  population,  and 


632 

can  hope  for  an  increase  of  the  same  only  by  the  encourage- 
ment of  industrial  pursuits.  Here  the  long  winter  leisure  has 
created  the  handicrafts  on  which  so  many  villages  rely,  and 
which  in  turn  have  given  rise  to  peddling,38  as  we  have 
seen  it  do  in  high  mountain  regions  where  altitude  intensifies 
and  prolongs  the  winter  season.  Agricultural  and  industrial 
life  are  still  undivorced,  just  as  in  primitive  communities.  The 
resulting  population  has  also  the  primitive  mark  of  great 
sparsity,  so  that  modern  industry,  which  depends  upon  a 
concentrated  labor  force,  is  here  inhibited.  Hence  Russian 
manufactures,  which  are  so  active  in  the  governments  of  Vla- 
dimir, Moscow,  and  St.  Petersburg,  cease  beyond  the  sixtieth 
parallel,  which  defines  the  northern  limit  of  the  agricultural 
belt  and  the  beginning  of  the  forest  and  the  fur  zone.37  [See 
maps  pages  8  and  612.] 
Social  The  rigorous  climate  of  Russia  was  undoubtedly  one 

cause  for  the  attachment  of  the  peasants  to  the  soil  in  1593. 
of  long 
winters.          This  measure  was  resorted  to  at  a  time  when  the  Muscovite 

dominion  from  its  center  in  Great  Russia  had  recently  been 
extended  at  the  expense  of  the  Tartars,  and  had  thus  embraced 
fertile  southern  lands,  which  tempted  the  northern  peasant 
away  from  his  unfruitful  fields.39  This  attraction,  coupled  with 
the  free  and  hopeful  life  of  the  frontier,  met  the  migrant 
instinct  bred  in  the  peasant  by  the  wide  plains  and  far  horizon 
of  Russia,  so  that  the  north  threatened  to  be  left  without 
cultivators.  Later,  the  harsh  climatic  conditions  of  the  north 
were  advanced  as  an  argument  against  the  abolition  of  serf- 
dom, on  the  ground  that  this  system  alone  secured  to  the 
landed  proprietor  a  steady  labor  supply,  and  guaranteed  to 
the  peasant  his  maintenance  during  the  long,  idle  winter. 

The  duration  and  severity  of  the  cold  season  has  put  a 
drag  upon  the  wheel  of  enterprise  in  Canada,  as  opposed 
to  the  warmer  United  States.  The  prairies  of  the  Canadian 
Northwest,  whose  fertile  soil  should  early  have  attracted 
settlement,  were  a  closed  land  till  railroads  could  pour  into 
it  every  summer  from  the  warmer  south  and  east  a  seasonal 
tide  of  laborers.  These  follow  the  harvest  as  it  advances  from 
point  to  point,  and  then  withdraw  in  autumn  either  to  the 
lumber  camps  of  eastern  Canada,  Minnesota  and  Wisconsin, 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE  633 

or  to  seek  other  forms  of  out-door  labor  in  the  more  southern 
states,  thus  lifting  from  the  Canadian  farmer  the  burden  of 
their  winter  support. 

In  the  lower  latitudes  of  the  Temperate  Zones,  where  the 
growing  season  is  long  and  the  dormant  period  corresponding- 
ly short  and  mild,  we  find  agriculture  based  upon  clearly 
distinguished  winter  and  summer  crops,  as  in  the  northern 
Punjab  (30°  to  34°  N.  L.)  ;39  or  producing  a  quick  succession 
of  valuable  crops,  where  the  fertility  of  the  soil  can  be 
maintained  by  manures  or  irrigating  streams,  as  in  many  of 
the  warmer  Southern  States  and  in  Spain40  respectively.  In 
Argentine,  where  tillage  is  extensive,  land  abundant,  and 
population  sparse,  where,  in  fact,  "skimp  farming"  is  the 
rule,  the  shrewd  cultivator  takes  advantage  of  the  long  grow- 
ing season  to  stretch  out  his  period  of  sowing  and  reaping, 
and  thus  tills  a  larger  area.  The  International  Harvester 
Company  of  America,  investigating  the  reason  for  the  small 
number  of  reaping  machines  employed  in  Argentine  in  pro- 
portion to  the  area  under  cultivation,  found  that  the  simple 
climatic  condition  of  a  long  growing  season  enabled  one  reaper 
to  serve  about  twice  the  acreage  usual  in  the  United  States, 
because  it  could  work  twice  as  long.41 

Over  and  beyond  slight  local  variations  of  climate  and  season  Zones  of 
within  the  same  zone,  which  contribute  their  quota  to  economic  culture, 
and  historical  results,  it  is  the  fundamental  differences  between 
the  hot,  cold  and  temperate  climatic  zones  that  produce  the 
most  conspicuous  and  abiding  effects.  These  broad  belts, 
each  with  its  characteristic  climatic  conditions  and  appro- 
priate civilization,  form  so  many  girdles  of  culture  around 
the  earth.  They  have  their  dominant  features  of  heat  and 
cold,  variously  combined  with  moisture  and  aridity,  which 
give  a  certain  zonal  stamp  to  human  temperature  and  devel- 
opment. 

The  two  cold  belts  have  little  claim  to  the  name  of  cultural 
zones,  since  their  inability  to  support  more  than  an  insignifi- 
cant population  has  made  them  almost  a  negligible  factor  in 
history.  [Compare  maps  pages  8,  9,  and  612.]  The  dis- 
coveries and  settlements  of  the  Northmen  in  Greenland  re- 
mained a  barren  historical  event,  though  the  vikings'  ships 


634  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE 

reached  a  new  hemisphere.  Iceland  is  the  only  land 
in  this  sub-arctic  region  which  ever  figured  upon  the 
stage  of  history;  and  its  role  was  essentially  passive.  Such 
prominence  as  it  acquired  was  due  to  its  island  nature  and  its 
situation  in  a  swirl  of  the  Gulf  Stream,  which  ameliorates  the 
worst  climatic  effects  of  its  far  northern  location,  and  brings 
it  just  within  the  upper  limit  of  the  temperate  belt.  The 
wide  sub-arctic  lowlands  of  Russia  and  Siberia,  which,  from 
the  Ural  Mountains  to  the  lower  Amur  River,  stretch  the  cold 
zone  well  below  the  sixtieth  parallel,  have  at  times  in  the  last 
three  centuries  and  especially  in  the  past  decade  thrown  their 
great  mass  into  the  scale  of  eastern  Asiatic  history.  This 
has  been  possible  because  the  hot  summer  characteristic  of 
continental  climates  forces  the  July  isotherm  of  20°  C.  north- 
ward over  the  vast  heated  surface  of  Asia  nearly  to  the  six- 
tieth parallel,  well  within  the  borders  of  Siberia.  It  gives 
that  belt  the  short  but  warm  growing  season  with  protracted 
hours  of  sunshine  which  is  so  favorable  to  cereals,  lending 
to  Omsk,  Tomsk,  Vitimsk  and  all  the  stretch  of  Russian 
settlements  in  Siberia,  an  admirable  summer  climate  like  that 
of  the  Canadian  Northwest.42 

The  The  North  Temperate  Zone  is  preeminently  the  culture  zone 

cradle  of  of  the  earth.  It  is  the  seat  of  the  most  important,  most 
civilization,  steadily  progressive  civilizations,  and  the  source  of  all  the 
cultural  stimuli  which  have  given  an  upward  start  to  civiliza- 
tion in  other  zones  during  the  past  three  centuries. 
It  contains  the  Mediterranean  basin,  which  was  the 
pulsing  heart  of  ancient  history,  and  all  the  modern 
historically  important  regions  of  Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  and 
America.  The  temperate  belt  of  the  southern  hemisphere 
also  is  following  its  lead,  since  European  civilization  has  been 
transplanted  to  other  parts  of  the  world.  This  is  the  zone 
which  least  suffers  from  the  drawbacks  of  climatic  monotony 
or  extremes,  and  best  combines,  especially  in  the  northern 
hemisphere,  the  wide  range  of  annual  and  seasonal  variety  so 
favorable  to  economic  and  cultural  development,  with  the 
incalculable  advantage  of  large  land  area. 

Man  grew  in  the  temperate  zone,  was  born  in  the  Tropics. 
There,  in  his  primitive,  pre-civilized  state,  he  lived  in  a  moist, 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE  635 

warm,  uniform  climate  which  supplied  abundantly  his  simple 
wants,  put  no  strain  upon  his  feeble  intellect  and  will.  That 
first  crude  human  product  of  Nature's  Pliocene  workshop 
turned  out  in  the  steaming  lowland  of  Java,  and  now  known 
to  us  as  the  Pithecanthropus  erectus,  found  about  him  the 
climatic  conditions  generally  conceded  to  have  been  necessary 
for  man  in  his  helpless,  futile  infancy.  Where  man  has  re- 
mained in  the  Tropics,  with  few  exceptions  he  has  suffered 
arrested  development.  His  nursery  has  kept  him  a  child. 
Though  his  initial  progress  depended  upon  the  gifts  which 
Nature  put  into  his  hands,  his  later  evolution  depended  far 
more  upon  the  powers  which  she  developed  within  him.  These 
have  no  limit,  so  far  as  our  experience  shows ;  but  their  growth 
is  painful,  reluctant.  Therefore  they  develop  only  where 
Nature  subjects  man  to  compulsion,  forces  him  to  earn  his 
daily  bread,  and  thereby  something  more  than  bread.  This 
compulsion  is  found  in  less  luxurious  but  more  salutary  geo- 
graphic conditions  than  the  Tropics  afford,  in  an  environment 
that  exacts  a  tribute  of  labor  and  invention  in  return  for  the 
boon  of  life,  but  offers  a  reward  certain  and  generous  enough 
to  insure  the  accumulation  of  wealth  which  marks  the  begin- 
ning of  civilization.43 

Most  of  the  ancient  civilizations  originated  just  within  the 
mild  but  drier  margin  of  the  Temperate  Zone,  where  the  cooler 
air  of  a  short  winter  acted  like  a  tonic  upon  the  energies 
relaxed  by  the  lethargic  atmosphere  of  the  hot  and  humid 
Tropics ;  where  congenial  warmth  encouraged  vegetation,  but 
where  the  irrigation  necessary  to  secure  abundant  and  regular 
crops  called  forth  inventiveness,  cooperation,  and  social  or- 
ganization, and  gave  to  the  people  their  first  baptism  of 
redemption  from  savagery  to  barbarism.  Native  civiliza- 
tions of  limited  development  have  arisen  in  the  Tropics,  but 
only  where,  as  in  Yemen,  Mexico  and  Peru,  a  high,  cool,  semi- 
arid  plateau,  a  restricted  area  of  fertile  soil,  and  a  protected 
location  alternately  coddled  and  spurred  the  nascent  people. 

As  the  Tropics  have  been  the  cradle  of  humanity,  the  Tem- 
perate Zone  has  been  the  cradle  and  school  of  civilization. 
Here  Nature  has  given  much  by  withholding  much.  Here 
man  found  his  birthright,  the  privilege  of  the  struggle. 


636  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE 


NOTES   TO    CHAPTER   XVII 

1.  G.  G.  Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  p.  15.     London,  1904. 

2.  Montesquieu,  The  Spirit  of  Laws,  Vol.  I,  Book  XIV.    London,  1906. 

3.  W.  Z.  Eipley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  574-578.    New  York,  1899. 

4.  Julius  Hann,  Handbook  of  Climatology,  Part  I,  pp.  223-224.     New 
York,  1903. 

5.  Isaiah  Bowman,  Distribution  of  Population  in  Bolivia,  Bulletin  of 
Geographical  Society  of  Philadelphia,  Vol.  VII,  pp.  40,  41. 

6.  Ratzel,  Aus  Mexico,  p.  415,  Note  14.     Breslau,  1878. 

7.  Julius  Hann,  Handbook  of  Climatology,  Part  I,  pp.  224-227.     New 
York,  1903. 

8.  G.  G.  Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  p.  23.     London,  1904. 

9.  Julius  Hann,  Handbook  of  Climatology,  Part  I,  pp.  171-173.    New 
York,  1903. 

10.  Ibid.,  pp.  188-189. 

11.  Ibid.,  pp.  57-58. 

12.  Risley  and  Gait,  Census  of  India  for   1901,  Vol.  I,  Part  1,  pp. 
14-21,  map  p.  4.     Calcutta,  1903. 

13.  H.    J.    Mackinder,    Britain    and    the    British    Seas,    pp.    173-174. 
London,  1904. 

14.  G.  G.  Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  pp.  65-66.    London,  1904. 

15.  Ibid.,  126-128.     Holdich,  India,  p.  259.     London,  1905. 

16.  G.   G.   Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  pp.    114,  382.     London, 
1904. 

17.  J.  Russell  Smith,  The  Economic  Importance  of  the  Tropical  Pla- 
teaus in  America,  House  Doc.  460,  58-3 — 53,  pp.  829-835.     Washington, 
1904. 

18.  G.  G.  Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  p.  160.    London,  1904. 

19.  E.  C.  Semple,  American  History  and  Its  Geographic  Conditions, 
Chap.  XV.     Boston,  1903. 

20.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  pp.  215-238.     New  York,  1899. 

21.  Ibid.,  p.  276,  Map  p.  274. 

22.  E.  C.  Semple,  American  History  and  Its  Geographic  Conditions,  p. 
280-283.     Boston,  1903. 

23.  G.  G  Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  pp.  434,  436.  London,  1904. 

24.  H.  R.  Mill,  International  Geography,  p.  1009.    New  York,  1902. 

25.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  II,  pp.  218-225.     London,  1896- 
1898. 

26.  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  p.  217. 

27.  W.  Z.  Ripley,  Races  of  Europe,  Chap.  XXI.     New  York,  1899. 

28.  Dr.   C.    Keller,   Madagascar,   I'auritius,   and  Other   East   African 
Islands,  pp.  172-175.    London,  1901. 

29.  Matthias  Romero,  Mexico  and  the  United  States,  Vol.  I,  p.   79. 
New  York,  1898. 

30.  From  a  personal  interview  with  the  supervising  agent  for  South 
America. 

31.  Heinrich  von  Treitschke,  Politik,  Vol.  I,  p.  212  et  seq.  Leipzig,  1897. 

32.  Henry  Buckle,  History  of  Civilization  in  England,  Vol.  I,  p.  32. 
New  York,   1884. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE  637 

33.  G.  G.  Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  pp.  320-324.    London,  1904. 

34.  Anatole  Leroy-Beaulieu,  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  Vol.  I,  pp.  6,  139- 
144.     New  York,  1893. 

35.  Norway,  Official  Publication,  p.  308.     Christiania,  1900. 

36.  A.  Leroy-Beaulieu,  Empire  of  the  Tsirs,  Vol.  I,  pp.  19,  142,  327. 
New  York,  1893. 

37.  G.   G.   Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  pp.   214,  315.     London, 
1904. 

38.  A.    Leroy-Beaulieu,    Empire   of   the   Tsars,   Vol.    I,   pp.    412-413. 
New  York,  1893. 

39.  Holdich,  India,  pp.  255-257.     London,  1905. 

40.  G.  G.  Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  p.  329.     London,  1904. 

41.  From  an  interview  with  the  supervising  agent  for  South  America. 

42.  G.  G.  Chisholm,  Commercial  Geography,  p.  356.    London,  1904. 

43.  Henry  Buckle,  History  of  Civilization  in  England,  Vol.  I,  pp.  31-33. 
New  York,  1884. 


INDEX 


Aargau,  527 

Aar  River,  369,  373,  597;  valley, 
113,  543 

Abassine   tribe,   587 

Aberdeen,  264 

Abo,  304 

Abors,  584 

Abraham,  47,  58,  107,  488,  493,  496 

Abruzzi  plateau,   567,   579 

Abyssinia,  133,  141,  143,  155,  305, 
309,  406;  Mountains,  23,  215, 
490,  500 

Acanthus,  459 

Acarnania,  363,  410 

Accessibility,  19-20,  45,  118,  340- 
341,  458 

Acclimatization,  37-38,  104,  121, 
611,  617.  See  also  Tropics 

Achelous  River,  327-328,  363,  410 

Acre  State,  231 

Adda  River  Valley,  359,  548 

Aden,  145,  154,  267,  268,  276,  426 

Adige  River  Valley,  326,  369,  537, 
539,  548,  597-598 

Adirondack  Mts.,  522 

Adriatic  Sea,  140,  180,  283,  286, 
300,  398,  527;  coast  of,  258, 
261;  hinterland  of,  14,  30,  143, 
339 ;  trade  of,  14,  149,  258,  314 

Aduatici,  85 

Aedui,  562 

Aegean  Sea,  civilization  of,  259, 
402,  415-416;  islands  of,  265, 
440,  444,  445,  446,  457,  459; 
period  of  history,  13,  67-68,  149, 
249,  304,  311,  314 

Aegina  Island,  417,  425,  427,  457 

Aetna,  560 

Aetolia,  363,  535 

Afghanistan,  location  of,  138,  143, 
523,  529,  536,  538,  596;  moun- 
tain tribes  of,  525,  553-554; 
pastures  of,  508,  548 ;  water 
supply  of,  357,  502 

Africa,  98,  144,  155,  189,  278,  619; 
agriculture  in,  81,  90,  570; 
coasts  of,  39,  254,  255,  257, 
263,  267,  275,  278,  280,  295-297, 
302,  341,  423;  location  of,  99, 
144,  309,  385,  386,  392,  393,  406, 
622;  native  races  of,  81,  100, 


108,  111,  119,  120,  124,  391,  392, 
393,  434;  native  states,  131,  195, 
374,  495 ;  nomadism  and  aridity, 
7,  64,  133,  152,  491-492,  495, 
500;  structure  of,  75,  117,  144, 
173,  254,  297,  340,  341,  392,  393, 
474,  See  also  North,  South, 
East  and  West  Africa 

Agricultural  lands  bordering  des- 
erts and  steppes,  7,  137,  226-228, 
486-487,  500-502.  See  also  No- 
mads 

Agriculture,  geographic  conditions 
for,  44,  64,  81,  261-262,  476- 
477,  559-560;  migratory,  55,  62, 
116,  182,  501;  sedentary,  47, 
56,  59,  60,  61,  65,  182,  501-502, 
570-571;  soils  and,  35,  63,  212, 
261-262.  See  Terrace  agricul- 
ture 

Ainos,  176,  272,  388,  395,  418,  423, 
437,  442 

Air  oasis,  511 

Airola,   550 

Aksu,  359 

Alabama,  102,  217-218,  481 

Alamanni,  540 

Alans,   86,   109 

Alaska,  coast  of,  15,  36,  57,  152, 
163,  182,  248,  261-262,  278,  299, 
302,  303,  330,  337,  395,  397, 
417;  location  of,  30,  77,  88, 
248,  384,  394,  405 ;  native  tribes 
of,  63,  100,  135,  137,  152,  278, 
330;  Russians  in,  29,  110,  235, 
285 

Albanians,  180,  404,  595 

Albany,   5,  337 

Albinoes,  38 

Aleppo,  58,  505 

Aleutian  Islands,  29,  36,  248,  266, 
388,  419,  625 

Alexander  the  Great,  309,  312,  337, 
402 

Alexandria,   276,   283,  347 

Alfred  the  Great,  372,  438 

Algeria,  132,  152,  157,  160,  163, 
212,  502,  511,  514 

Algonquins,  55,  89,  102,  124,  195, 
217 

Alhambra,  508 


640 


INDEX 


Alicuri,  451 

Alliers  River,  533 

Allmende,   575 

Almeria,   567 

Alpaca,  63-64,  575 

Alpine  race,  160,  164,  222,  360- 
361,  521,  597-598,  621-622;  dis- 
tribution of,  19,  39,  121,  176, 
284,  543 

Alps,  as  barriers,  4,  97,  524,  532, 
535-537,  541-543;  as  boundaries, 
82,  214,  222,  401,  402,  404;  Ber- 
nese, 524,  543;  Central,  532, 
534-535,  537,  539;  Cottine,  532; 
Eastern,  532;  economic  condi- 
tions in,  80,  207-208,  522,  557, 
560,  563-566,  571-572,  578,  579, 
581,  586,  589;  ethnology  of, 
597-598;  Glarner,  543;  isolation 
within,  94,  595,  598,  600;  Ju- 
lian, 553;  Maritime,  523,  532, 
536,  547,  566;  Monte  Rosa,  543, 
557;  passes  of,  4,  97,  523,  535, 
542,  547-548;  pastures  of,  573- 
577;  Pennine,  524,  536,  546; 
piedmont  of,  70,  361,  482,  525, 
527-528,  579;  Rhaatian,  525; 
transmontane  routes  of,  522, 
528,  529,  533,  535-537,  548,  554; 
Western,  532,  542.  See  also 
Switzerland 

Alsace,   189,  229,  600 

Altai   Mts.,   489 

Amalfi,  257 

Amazon  River,  37,  154,  337,  338, 
341,  364,  610 

Amber  trade,  82,  97 

Amboina,   452,   459 

Americas,  animals  of  the,  63-64; 
area  of,  172,  199-200,  382,  392; 
Atlantic  front  of,  82,  149,  388, 
390;  European  expansion  to,  69, 
74,  82,  106-107,  174,  189-190, 
300-301;  isolation  of,  386-388, 
390;  origin  of  native  race  of, 
102,  387-389,  396,  473;  Pacific 
slope  civilization  of,  389,  395- 
396;  structure  of,  257,  266,  302- 
303,  394-396,  474,  476,  617.  See 
also  Indians,  North,  South  and 
Central  America 

Amorgos,  440 

Amsterdam,   13,   331 

Amur  River,  44,  229,  305,  344-345, 
350,  370,  388,  410,  442 

AmyrtSBua,  King,   372 

Amysis,    King,   377 

Anadyr   River,   344 


Anahuac  Plateau,  157,  395-396 

Anatolia,    92 

Anclam,  284 

Andalusia,  86,  258,  476,  537,  619, 
622 

Andaman  Islands,  159,  441,  442 

Andermatt,  550;  valley  of,  534, 
572 

Andes,  as  barriers,  531,  535,  546, 
611;  intermontane  basins  of, 
34,  37,  108,  160,  342,  396,  561; 
pastures  of,  63-64,  485,  575; 
piedmont,  154,  338,  341,  561. 
See  also  Cordilleras 

Andizhan,  529 

Andorra  Republic,  233,  592 

Andros,   459 

Angara   River,   157 

Angila,   163 

Angles,  44,  48,  85,  273,  338,  370 

Anglo-Saxons,  in  Britain,  48,  89, 
134,  146,  184,  273,  422,  479; 
area  of  the,  114,  180,  189 

Angra  Pequena,*  263 

Animal  life,  26,  *63-64,  132,  208, 
330-332,  411,  434,  441,  445-446, 
465,  485,  609.  See  also  Bio- 
geography  and  Islands. 

Annam,  30,  308 

Ant-hills,  325,  481 

Antilles  Islands,  density  of  popu- 
lation in,  448,  452,  453;  Euro- 
pean holdings  in,  108,  426,  430- 
431,  438,  447-448,  616;  location 
of,  129,  328;  native  races,  88, 
178,  265,  438;  trade  of,  29,  47, 
264,  269,  284,  618 

Antioch,  145,  268,  283,  535 

Antwerp,  149,  286,  351 

Apaches,  116,   154,  237,  329 

Apennine,  Mts.,  108,  401,  404, 
527,  543,  562,  566,  579,  580, 
595,  599;  passes  of,  91,  283, 
527,  528;  ^Peninsula,  398,  401- 
402,  404 

Appalachian  Mountain  system,  as 
barrier,  42,  44,  66,  130,  142, 
190,  214,  286,  343,  349,  474, 
540-541;  passes  of,  81,  535-536, 
540-541,  544;  piedmont,  70,  481, 
530;  Southern,  23,  45,  161,  237, 
522,  599;  southern  Indians  of, 
89,  92,  154,  217,  562 

Appenzell,  579,  594 

Apuanians,   91 

Aqua  Sextise,  540 

Aquileia,  283,  286,  553 

Aquitanians,    361 


INDEX 


641 


Arabia,  coasts  of,  145,  309;  des- 
erts of,  63,  483,  507,  509,  511; 
peninsula  of,  131,  145,  398-400, 
402,  405-406 

Arabian  Sea,  254,  269,  302 

Arabs,  expansion  of,  160,  185,  192, 
215,  358,  386,  406,  492,  510, 
545 ;  maritime  commercial  ex- 
pansion of,  6,  84,  164,  192-193, 
196,  252-253,  265,  268-270,  276, 
309,  425,  506.  See  also  Bed- 
ouins, Saracens,  Mohammedan- 
ism, and  Nomads. 

Aradus,    250 

Aragon,  231,  429 

Aral  Sea,  374 

Aravalli   Hills,   6 

Arawaks,  38,  100-101,  154;  sea- 
v.-ard  expansion  of,  178,  265, 
303,  406,  438 

Arawan,  153 

Arcadia,  430,  581,  591,  595 

Archangel,  207,  340,  479 

Arctic  Ocean,  143,  172,  210,  299, 
308,  384 

Arctic  regions,  coast  settlements 
in,  88,  107,  152-154,  172-173, 
248-249,  299,  302-303,  330,  332, 
486,  624;  fisheries  in,  248-249, 
330,  332 ;  retarded  development 
in,  65,  263,  398,  485-486,  505, 
624-625,  633-634;  sparse  popula- 
tion, 152,  206-207,  486,  611, 
624 

Area,  168-202 ;  and  bio-geography, 
168-172,  176,  178,  179,  209,  410- 
412;  and  differentiation,  112- 
113,  169-171,  173-175,  179,  193- 
194,  411-412,  421,  607;  and 
growth,  16,  60,  148,  170-171, 
175-176,  183-186,  188-189,  192, 
219,  311;  and  language,  174- 
175,  180-181,  191;  and  location, 
129-130,  193-194;  and  race  di- 
versity, 173-174;  and  varied 
geographic  conditions,  112,  173, 
174,  188-189,  607;  decreasing, 
92-93,  139,  175-176;  extension 
of  ethnic,  cultural  and  political, 
170,  183-193;  index  of  civiliza- 
tion, 58-59,  150,  154,  170-171, 
181-187,  197;  law  of  increasing 
territorial,  76,  150,  177,  181, 
184-187,  190,  192,  194,  197, 
306,  311,  312,  432;  large,  early 
disadvantages  of,  12,  14,  134, 
183-185,  189,  190,  212-213,  307, 
343-344,  477-479 ;  large,  later  ad- 


vantages of,  12,  21-22,  179-180, 
184,  186-187,  189,  193-195,  306, 
312,  444,  482;  large,  need  of 
communication  in,  44,  200,  342 ; 
large,  permanence  and  strength 
in,  92-93,  114,  119,  139,  175- 
180,  183,  184,  187,  198,  253, 
425;  national  estimates  of,  124, 
139,  195-201,  218-219,  252-253; 
of  geographic  origins,  122-124, 
185 ;  of  oceans  and  enclosed 
seas,  284-285,  301-302,  310; 
small,  early  advantages  of,  123, 
134,  180,  182-183,  185-186,  191, 
192,  310-311,  343-344;  small,  in 
primitive  societies,  181-183,  185- 
186,  195,  197;  small,  weakness 
of,  43,  95,  114,  119,  155,  163, 
170,  172,  175-180,  184,  195-197, 
311,  411,  429,  591.  See  also 
Continents 

Argentine,  65,  106,  275,  342,  351, 
355,  441,  482,  483,  485,  509, 
582,  633 

Argolis,  397 

Argols,  568,  578 

Argonautic  Expedition,  131 

Argos,  250,  327,  430 

Arianism,  27,   86,   117,  339 

Aridity,  62-63,  65,  94,  152.  See 
also  Deserts  and  Steppes 

Arikaras,   155,  297 

Ariminum,    527 

Ariovistus,  157,  540 

Aristotle,  195-196,  430,  444,  459 

Arizona,  102,  116,  329,  346,  489, 
508 

Arkansas,  65,  93;  River,  155,  346, 
530 

Armenia,  99,  216,  273,  296,  349, 
402,  542,  587 

Artaxerxes,  372 

Aru    Islands,    428 

Arve  Valley,  550 

Aryans,  distribution  of,  6,  46,  74, 
159,  180,  402,  495,  596;  in  In- 
dia, 6,  37,  46,  104,  142,  159, 
180,  359,  402,  437,  526,  538, 
596,  627;  linguistic  family  of, 
74,  124,  371,  526;  origin  of,  74, 
122,  124,  383-384 

Ascension  Isle,  172,  411,  426,  432, 
446 

Asia,  area  and  structure  of,  112, 
255,  384,  393-394,  474-475,  575; 
aridity  and  nomadism  in,  7,  64, 
109-110,  117,  142,  193,  500,  503, 
510;  articulations  of,  131,  145, 


642 


INDEX 


255,  265-266,  398-400 ;  early  civ- 
ilization in,  144,  145,  149,  330, 
390;  ethnology  of,  103,  391;  vi- 
cinal location  of,  3,  14,  106-107, 
110,  129,  131,  149,  381,  383-385 

Asia  Minor,  83,  188,  266,  273,  398, 
588,  619;  coasts  of,  255,  257, 
265,  476;  Greeks  in,  79,  146, 
252,  273;  location  of,  122,  231, 
405 

Askelon,    507 

Assam,  359 

Assiniboine  Eiver,  98 

Assyria,  Median  invasion  of,  492, 
588 

Assyrians,  invasion  of  Palestine, 
91,  545 

Asturias,  216,  233,  580,  622 

Atbara  Eiver  Arabs,  489,  500,  506 

Athapascans,  100,  102,  116,  124, 
137,  154,  195,  278 

Athens,  22,  23,  111,  129,  250,  285, 
450;  sea  power  of,  13,  67,  149, 
429 

Atlantic,  abyss,  384-387,  390,  396; 
front  of  Africa,  280,  309;  front 
of  Europe,  30,  82,  109,  149,  150, 
300-301;  Ocean,  30,  214,  254, 
302,  340;  scarcity  of  islands  in, 
387,  427 ;  plain  of  United  States, 
66,  260,  343,  524;  period  of  his- 
tory, 13,  82,  149,  282-283,  310, 
311,  386 

Atlas  Mts.,  39,  113,  160,  212,  489, 
580,  593,  618;  piedmont  oases 
of,  499,  501-502,  558-559 

Atnas  Indians,  137 

Atrato  River,  259 

Attica,  location  of,  85,  110,  111, 
216,  397,  402 

Augrogne  Valley,  600 

Augsburg,  537,  544 

Augustus  Caesar,  260,  440,  553 

Austria,  central  location  of,  144, 
148;  hinterland  of  the  Adriatic, 
30,  111,  258,  522;  races  in,  94, 
115,  136,  186,  224 

Australia,  area  of,  169,  172,  173, 
199-201,  382,  390,  392,  398; 
deserts  and  steppes  of,  182,  483, 
526-527,  614;  English  expansion 
to,  20-22,  106,  112,  119,  174, 
189,  616;  flora  and  fauna  of, 
63,  76,  208,  411,  441,  485;  iso- 
lation of,  144,  169,  173,  298, 
380-382,  383,  385,  392,  433,  434 ; 
native  race  of,  4,  45,  55,  76,  77, 
100,  144,  184,  382,  391,  411; 


native  race   declining,   172,   17fi, 

178;     rivers    and    railroads    in, 

355;  structure  of,  255,  474,  524 
Austro- Hungary,     124,     141,     2M3, 

258,  361.     See  also  Austria  and 

Hungary 
Auvergne  Plateau,  19,  35,  121,  522, 

580,  582 
Axholm,  372 
Aymaras,  34,  101 
Azof  Sea,  255 
Azores  Islands,  381,  413,  432,  439, 

446,   448 
Aztecs,  78,  157,  374,  611.    See  also 

Mexico 

Baalbec,    534 

Bab-el-Mandeb,  Strait  of,  270,  305 

Babemba,    368 

Babylon,  22,  91,  296,  349,  492 

Baden,    373 

Bagdad,  153,  349,  507 

Bagirmi,    373-374 

Baguio,   532 

Bahama  Islands,  430,  448 

Bahrein  Islands,  431,  454,  507 

Baku,  547 

Bakuma,  368 

Bakwiri,  39 

Balearic  Islands,  420,  429,  434 

Bali,   208,   268,  452,  458,  569 

Balkan  Mts.,  586 

Balkan  Peninsula,  base  of,  180, 
402-404;  races  in,  26,  146,  180, 
273,  399.  See  also  Greece  and 
Peloponnesus 

Balkh,   529 

Baltic  Provinces  of  Russia,  155, 
181,  192,  224,  230 

Baltic  Sea,  as  enclosed  basin,  13- 
14,  136,  254,  282-283,  302,  304, 
314,  336,  347,  374;  coasts  of, 
14,  143,  24G-247,  260,  262,  271- 
272,  310-311,  429;  location  of, 
109,  308;  plain  of,  92,  112,  478- 
480;  trade  of,  13-14,  42,  97, 
130,  244,  250,  284,  331,  339- 
340,  348,  426 

Baltimore,   246 

Baltistan,  532,  585-587 

Baluchi  mountain  tribes,  525,  595 

Baluchistan,  359,  503,  508,  525, 
536 

Bamboo   grass,   64,   576 

Banda   Islands,    278.    444,    459 

Banda   Sea,   428 

Bangkok,  308.  322-323,  347 

Banjarmasin,  321 


INDEX 


643 


Banks  Islands,  456 

Bantu  peoples,  7,  39,  104,  559, 
584;  speech,  118,  123,  270 

Baranof  Island,  29 

Barava,  157,  269 

Barbadoes,  448,  452,  453 

Barbary    Coast,    104,    622 

Barea,   140,    274,   455 

Barcelona,  257,  284,  303,  420,  528, 
547 

Barmaz,    578 

Barotse,  36,  106,  325 

Barriers,  effect  of  geographic,  3-5, 
81.  See  also  Deserts,  Moun- 
tains, Swamps,  and  Seas 

Barrow  men,  75,  435 

Earth,  Heinrich,  216,  491,  497,  502- 
503 

Bashkirs,  226 

Basilicata,  mountains  of,  39,  580 

Basques,  258,  582,  600 

Basses-Alps,  564,  582 

Bnsutoland,  141,  580 

Batavia,  island  of,  85,  116,  357, 
372 

Bathurst,   370 

Batoka,   368 

Baton    Rouge   District,   229 

Battaks,    569,    580-581 

Bavaria,  30,  121,  373,  479,  539, 
621 

Bay  of  Biscay,  314,  532,  547 
Cambay,    104 
Carthage,  250 
Liibeck,  260 
Naples,    265 

Bayonne,  528,  547 

Bayou  Teche,  155 

Beaupre,    364 

Bechuanaland,  38,  55,  137,  500 

Bedouins,  nomads,  489,  490,  493, 
494,  497,  503-505,  507,  509,  oil, 
615-616;  sedentary,  514.  See 
also  Arabians. 

Beira,  263 

Beirut,  548 

BelgfB,  85,  116,  134,  361 

Belgium,  dense  population  of,  65, 
447,  477;  North  Sea  location, 
332,  351;  railroads  of,  355; 
small  state,  177,  186 

Bengal,  228,  359 

Bengali,  526,  619 

Benguela,  267,  278;  Current,  613 

Benguet  Province,  532 

Beni   Jafre,   235         „ 

Berbers,  mountaineers,  39,  113, 
160,  559;  nomads,  113,  511, 


615-616;  North  African  location. 
28,  110,  132,  272,  418.  See  also 
Kabyles  and  Tuaregs 

Bergamo,  528,  581 

Bergen,  304 

Bering  Sea,  enclosed  basin,  29, 
173,  303-305,  308,  340,  344,  381. 
385,  400,  439,  473,  505 

Bering  Strait,  102,  123,  173,  305 
388,  424,  439 

Bering,  Vitus,  305 

Bermuda  Islands,  43,  430,  448,  450 

Bern,  canton,  527;  city,  369,  592 

Berwick,  547 

Berytus,  250 

Besanc,on,  369 

Bessarabia,  224,  350 

Bhils,  159,  587,  596 

Bhutan,   228,  233,  568,  575 

Bhutias,  531-532,  553,  568 

Bidarkas,  29,  248,  299 

Bihenas,   278 

Bilbao,   547 

Bilma,    152,   505 

Biloxi  Indians,  155 

Binungku,   459 

Bio-geography,  68,  76,  159,  168- 
169,  172-174,  178-179,  206,  208, 
384-385,  391,  405,  409-412,  438- 
439,  441-442,  445-446,  473-474, 
558,  608 

Birmingham    (Ala.),   629 

Bismarck  Islands,  444,  448 

Bissagos  Islands,  153 

Bituriges,  tribe,  361 

Bizerta,  250 

Black  Belt  (Southern  States),  114, 
161,  619 

Black  Forest  Mountains,  39,  111, 
536,  566,  579 

Black  Lands,  see  Ukraine 

Black  Sea,  14,  313,  336;  and  the 
Caucasus  Mts.,  528,  532,  538, 
547;  big  rivers  of,  30,  97,  139, 
140,  339,  348,  353;  Greek  ex- 
pansion to,  67-68,  187,  302,331 

Bloemfontein,   199 

Bluegrass  country,  113 

Blue  Ridge  Mts.,  42,  535 

Blumenbach's  system,  391 

Boehmer  Wald,   224 

Bceotia,  110 

Boers,  language  of,  116,  175;  pas- 
toral life  of,  48,  93,  135,  232, 
488,  490,  497,  510,  623 

Bogota,  259 

Bohemia,  136,  224,  360,  397,  600 

Bolabola  Island,  444 


644= 


INDEX 


Bolan  Pass,  538 

Bolivia,  central  location  of,  138, 
143,  163;  and  Chile  boundary, 
219-220;  loss  of  territory,  163, 
231;  Plateau,  342,  373,  395,  476, 
561,  610 

Bologna,   99,    527-528 

Bombay,  426,  528 

Bontoc   Province,   578 

Boone,  Daniel,  42 

Bordeaux,  246,  347 

Boreyda,    153 

Borneo,  65,  159,  321,  381-382,  433, 
443,  452;  Chinese  in,  30,  104, 
268,  307 

Bornu,  140,  152,  362,  373-374,  492, 
511 

Borzil   Pass,   575 

Bosnia,  177 

Bosporus,  52,  129,  130,  180,  262, 
331,  337 

Boston,  175 

Bostra,  507 

Botany  Bay,  440 

Botokudos  tribe,   38 

Bou-bou  tribe,  481 

Boundaries,  as  border  zones,  204- 
206,  208,  220-230;  as  limits  of 
motion,  74,  208-210,  220;  barrier 
or  natural,  43-44,  52,  82,  97, 
133-135,  140,  163,  172-173,  182, 
183,  192,  212-216,  224,  357-360, 
370,  478,  542,  593;  breadth  of 
border  zone,  208,  210-212,  215, 
344;  colonial  frontiers,  148,  210- 

213,  226-228,  232,  345,  530-531; 
colonial,     lawless     elements     in, 
235-236;  colonial,  spirit  of,  150, 
199,    231-234;    common    border 
districts,  215,  217,  219-220,  256; 
cultural    border    zones,    116-117, 
135,  136,  223-228,  230,  525-526; 
defection    on    political,    230-234, 
236,  258;  defenses  of,  140,  233- 
235,    492,    498;     ethnic    border 
zones,    111-117,    135,    136,    155- 
157,  221-224,  226-228,  230,  237- 
238,  391;   index  of  growth  and 
decline,  157,  210-213;  linguistic, 
222,   226-229,   360-361,   525-526; 
of    growth,    76-77,    89,    162-163, 
209-210,    224,    345;    of    decline, 
83,    92-93,    163,    210,    216,    230; 
of  the  habitable   area,   206-208, 

214,  552,  575,  607,  610;  oscilla- 
tions of,  206-207,   209-211,   215, 
219,    221,    229;    piedmont,    113, 
525-526,  530-531,  596,  599;   po- 


litical, 192,  215,  216,  220,  221, 
224,  229,  525;  primitive,  54, 
57-58,  89-90,  183,  209,  215-219; 
refugees  across,  93-94,  222,  236- 
238;  relation  of  ethnic  and  cul- 
tural, 83,  227-229;  relation  of 
ethnic  and  political,  190-192, 
229-230,  362,  543;  rivers  as, 
360-363;  sea  as  absolute,  139, 
141,  214-215,  275,  418,  421,  430, 
434;  states  of  tlic  border,  218, 
233-236;  tariff,  220-221,  259; 
wars  of  the,  194,  233,  234,  369, 
428,  491 

Bouton,   459 

Bourtanoer  Moor,  215,  370 

Bow  and  arrow,  distribution  of, 
445-446 

Brahmanism,  599 

Brahmaputra  River,  180,  356;  Val- 
ley, 357,  526 

Brandenburg,   60 

Brazil,  93,  220,  231,  272,  342,  355, 
444,  454,  617;  European  ele- 
ments in,  106,  153,  154,  27~3, 
277,  310,  627-628;  native  In- 
dians of,  38,  56,  100-101,  338; 
negroes  in,  91,  273 

Bremen,  150,  245-247,  341,  347 

Bremerhaven,  246-247 

Brenner  Pass,  222,  369,  474,  522, 
523,  548;  route,  258,  528,  537, 
539,  542,  544,  592 

Breslau,  342 

Briare  Canal,  354 

Brinton,  D.  G.,  79 

Briochov  Islands,  207 

Bristol,   13 

British  Columbia,  30,  77,  531; 
coast  Indians  of,  15,  36,  57,  137, 

163,  261-262,  299,  302,  330,  388- 
389,  395,  417.     See  also  Haidas, 
Tlingits   and    Tsimsheans 

British  Empire,  area  and  distribu- 
tion of,  189,  193,  195,  312,  413, 
445 

British  Guiana,   106,  626 

British  Isles,  race  elements  in,  115, 

164,  176,  187,  296,  447;  unifor- 
mity of  skull  form  in,  421-422. 
See  also  Great  Britain  and  Ire- 
land 

Brittany,  an  Atlantic  peninsula, 
149,  269,  397-398,  405-406,  480, 
619;  maritime  development  of, 
187,  249,  264,  269;  soil  of,  19, 
279,  480;  Saxons  in,  74,  273, 
479 


INDEX 


645 


Broach,   6 

Bronze  Age,  415-416,  435 

Bruges,  287,  304,  342 

Brunei,  321 

Bryce,  James,   199 

Bubastis,  99 

Buckle,  Henry,  18,  629-630 

Buddhism,  41 ;  differentiated  forms 
of,  175,  228,  306;  in  Japan, 
175,  306,  414;  in  the  Asiatic 
highlands,  27,  100,  112,  228,  511, 
514,  568,  572,  576,  583,  585, 
588,  600 

Buduma  Islanders,  296,  368-369, 
462 

Buenos  Ayres,  347,  623 

Buffaloes,    35,    63 

Bugis,    424 

Bug  Eiver,  224 

Bukhara,  163,  491,  505-507,  529, 
542 

Bulgarians,  45,  74,  85,  109,  361, 
402 

Burckhardt,   J.   L.,   504,   509 

Burgundian   Gate,   539 

Burgundians,  27,  339,  540 

Burgundy,    139,   523 

Buriats,  49 

Burma,   320,   534 

Buru,  459 

Bush  Fulani,  511 

Bushmen,  35,  55,  118,  158,  266, 
297-298,  497,  504 

Busrah,  349,  507 

Byrd's  Fort,  370 

Byzantium,  252,  348 

Cabot,  John,  150,  301 

Cabral,  406 

Oaddoes,    155 

Cadiz,   13,   149,  246 

Caesar,    Julius,    82,    90,    216,    249, 

357,  361,  369,  522,  533,  540,  553 
Cairo,   175,  358 
Caithness,   304,   397 
Calabar,  Old,  262,  277 
Calabria,   39 
Calchedon,  252 
Calcutta,  347,  557 
California,  4-5,  29,  267,  280,  545; 

early   routes   to,   340,   530,   545 
Caliphate,  185,  507,  512.     See  also 

Saracens 

Calmanianes,  420 
Calvinism,  587 
Cambodia,  308 

Cambridge    (England),    245,   307 
Cameron,  V.  L.,  320,  570 


Campania,   588 
Campos,   38 

Canaan,  47,  58,  494,  496,  504,  505, 
511;  native  religion  of,  514,  599 
Canada,    area    of,    130,    200,    342; 
climatic  effects  in,  10,  47,  343- 
344,     625,     632-634;     emigrants 
from,  in  the  United  States,  95, 
221-222;    French    in    early,    52, 
92,  98,  111,   114,   130,  154,   157, 
163-164,  187,  368,  430;  fur  trade 
in,  5,   10,  47,  97,  135,  187,  212, 
336,  343,  344,  540,  554;  Indians 
of,    77-78,    87,    100,    102,    114, 
124,     178 ;     river     highways    of 
French    expansion    in,    44,    336, 
342-343,  348-349 
Canadian  Eiver,  346,  530 
Canals,  246-247,  352-354 
Canary  Islands,  88,  129,  381,  387, 
413,    426,    428,    432,    438,    441, 
442,  446,  448,  618;  primitive  in- 
habitants of,  411,  418,  419,  434, 
462.     See  also  Gaunches 
Cannibalism,  67,   461,  465 
Cantabrian  Mts.,  86,  580,  586,  622 
Canton,  China,  269,  322,  347,  367, 

621 

Cantonal  government,  590,  592-594 
Cape  Ann,  253 

Bojador,  250 

Breton   Island,   442 

Carmel,  266,  268 

Cod,    253,    331 

Colony,    87,    114,    116,    267, 

369,   497,   622-623,   626 
Comorin,  254 
Farewell,  249 
Finisterre,  314 
Guadafui,  265 
Henlopen,  253 
Horn,   426 
Malia,   249,   302 
Nao,  537 
Non,   250 

of  Good  Hope,  17-18,  265,  310 
Prince  of  Wales,   388 
Eace,  331 
Capes,    in    early    navigation    and 

colonization,    249-253 
Cape  St.   Eoque,  406 
St.  Vincent,  249 
Town,    199,    263;    to    Cairo 

Eailroad,  199 
Verde  Islands,  153,  422,  432, 

448 

Capri,  453,  457,  460 
Capua,  369,  588 


646 


INDEX 


Caravan  routes,  97,  152-153,  346, 
491-492,  506,  511,  541 

Cariajis,  274,  383 

Caribbean  Soa,  259,  303,  313,  315, 
336,  347,  426 

Oaribs,  100-101;  expansion  to  An- 
tilles, 88,  100,  178,  265,  303,  338, 
406,  438;  river  life  and  expan- 
sion of,  265,  338,  364 

Carical,  165 

Carinthia,  565 

Caroline   Islands,   448 

Carpathian  Mts.,  4,  478,  532,  565 

Carpini,  John  de,  57-58,  494 

Carthage,  location  of,  250,  284; 
maritime  trade  of,  96,  148,  272, 
314,  428 ;  Spanish  dominion  of, 
132,  151,  405 

Cartier,   Jacques,    187 

Cascade  Range,  70,  95 

Casco  Bay,  253 

Caspian  Sea,  259,  338  339,  348, 
353,  374,  493,  528,  538,  541,  546- 
547;  arid  plains  of,  7,  26,  63, 
500 

Cassala,  490,  500 

Castile,  216,  231;  people  of,  258, 
619 

Castleford,  245 

Catalonia,  420 ;  people  of,  258,  420 

Catawba  Indians,  93 

Catskill  Mts.,  533 

Cattle-lifting,  233-235,  587 

Caucasus  Mts.,  as  barrier,  535,  538- 
539,  541;  ethnology  of,  94,  235, 
595,  597;  location  of,  94,  254, 
547 ;  routes  across,  528,  546-547, 
554;  Russian  conquest  of,  523, 
526,  554,  589-590,  598;  tribes 
of,  235,  579,  587,  590-592 

Cebu,  420 

Celebes,  159,  208,  442,  459;  Sea, 
307 

Celibacy,  514,  582-584 

Celts,  geographical  distribution  of, 
46,  85,  86,  164,  180,  184,  304, 
371,  387,  418,  478;  survival  of 
language  of,  164,  404,  421 

Cenchrae,  250 

Central  Africa,  65,  118,  123,  155, 
158 

Central  America,  65,  78,  355,  546; 
early  civilization  of,  102,  182, 
329,  392,  395 

Central  Asia,  arid  highlands  of, 
109,  227,  346,  483,  531-532,  558, 
575;  nomads  of,  46,  92,  109, 
142,  144,  228,  475,  489,  510,  511, 


514,  541,  558,  575;  nomadic  con- 
quests in  lowlands,  46,  109,  402- 
403,  475 ;  pass  routes  of,  528- 
529,  539,  541,  548,  551-552 

Central  Europe,  4,  65,  110,  135, 
422,  532;  natural  routes  from 
the  Mediterranean  into,  44-45, 
283,  532,  540 

Central  Plateau  of  France,  353, 
533,  562 

Ceos,   464-465 

Ceram,  159,  321,  424,  459 

Corcina  Island,  440 

Ceuta,   132 

Ceylon,  175,  415,  600;  insular 
dependency  of  India,  265,  381, 
398,  428 ;  location  for  m-xritime 
trade,  108,  154,  267,  284,  425, 
428;  race  elements  in,  104,  425- 
426,  437 

Chain  Island,  449 

Chalcidice,  252,  429,  459 

Champlain,  Samuel  de,  343 

Chandarnagar,   165 

Channel  Isles,  264,  418,  419,  428- 
429,  447-448 

Charkar   Mongols,    234-235 

Charlemagne,  545 

Chatot    Indians,    218 

Chattanooga,   535 

Chatti  Germans,  116-117 

Chaudiere  River,  366 

Checks  to  population,  67,  196,  461- 
465,  582-586 

Chengtu  plain.  327,  530 

Cherbourg,  149 

Cherokee  Indians,  65,  195,  535; 
area  and  location  of,  92-93,  116, 
154,  217,  562 

Chersonesus,   252 

Cherusci  tribe,  216 

Chesapeake  Bay,  77,  199,  260,  286 

Cheviot  Hills,  547 

Chiavenna,    550 

Chicago,   247,   375 

Chickasaw  Indians,  217,  562; 
Trail,  349 

Chilas  tribe,  587,  594 

Chilcat  Indians,  137,  278,  531 

Chile,  106,  163,  210-220,  440,  476: 
fiord  coasts  and  nautical  devel- 
opment in,  15,  141,  261-262, 
302,  303 

Chili  Province,  110,  581 

Chilkoot  Pass,  278,  531,  544 

China,  area  of,  194,  342;  civiliza- 
tion of,  137,  326327,  415,  509; 
density  of  population  in,  60, 


INDEX 


647 


65,  67,  110,  184,  447,  458,  477, 
548,  568-569;  ethnic  borders  of, 
226-228;  ethnic  survivals  in, 
598-599 ;  inland  waterways  of, 
322,  341-343,  352-355;  location 
of,  137,  213,  217,  306;  nomad 
frontier  of,  110,  112,  136,  234, 
475,  495-496,  499,  514;  Pacific 
coast  of,  30,  143,  145,  267,  366, 
626;  trade  of,  £2,  187,  269,  276, 

285,  530-531,  541 

China  Sea,  282,  307-308 

Chinese,  area  of,  119,  180;  emi- 
gration to  Pacific  lands,  30, 
267-268,  307-308;  expansion,  60, 
103-104,  110,  189,  226-227,  423, 
425,  499,  628 

Chinook  Indians  and  language,  277 

Chisone   Valley,   222,  600 

Chitral  district,  589 

Choctaws,   155,   217-218 

Chonos  Islands,  465 

Christiania,  218,  549 

Christianity,  and  the  Mediterran- 
ean, 196,  515;  differentiation 
in,  117,  122 

Chukches,  coast  tribes,  174,  249, 
304-305,  388,  424;  reindeer 
tribes,  63,  486,  505 

Chukchian   Peninsula,  304,  405 

Chumbi  Valley,  552 

Cilicia,   459 

Cimarron  River,  346 

Cimbri  migration,  4,  77,  85,  522, 
539,  542 

Cinque  Ports,  283 

Circassians,  587,  590 

Cities,  coast,  244-246,  250-252; 
pass,  551;  piedmont,  527-530, 
547;  river,  341-342;  seaport, 

286,  347,  547-548 
City-states,   183,  195-196,  591-592, 

595 

Civilization,  geographical  distribu- 
tion   of    earliest,    328-330,    635; 
land  bond  in,  53,  59,  65,  69-71, 
82-83;   expansion  of,  119,  183 
Civil    War,    English,    52;    of    the 
United  States,  23,  161,  176,  535, 
557.     See  also  Slavery 
Clarke's   Island,   253 
Clark,  George  Rogers,  370 
Climate,    and    agriculture,    44,    63, 
65,  328-330,  435,  448,  615,  628, 
632-633 ;      and      differentiation, 
112,  116,  610,  611,  619-622;  and 
immigration,    619-620;    and    in- 
dustries, 507-508,  629,  632;  and 


race  hybridization,  107,  120, 
135,  212,  628;  and  race  tempera- 
ment, 619-622;  and  relief,  112- 
113,  279,  477,  521,  542-544,  558, 
573,  616-617;  blanket  theories 
of,  18,  20,  608,  622;  contrasted, 
616,  618-619,  622,  629;  direci 
and  indirect  effects  of,  36-40, 
608,  609-610,  620,  625;  heat 
belts  of,  617-618,  623-624,  633- 
634;  importance  of,  7-10,  607- 
608,  610-611;  monotonous,  622- 
624,  626,  629;  retarding  effect 
of  excessively  cold,  10,  14,  15, 
47,  63,  212-213,  308,  343-344, 
632-634.  See  also  Rainfall, 
Seasons,  Tropics,  Frigid  and 
Temperate  Zones 
Clyde  River,  149,  247,  283 
Coasts,  as  boundary  zones,  204- 
205,  242-247,  250,  260,  271,  336- 
337;  accessibility  from  hinter- 
land, 142,  256-257,  339-341,  347; 
accessibility  from  sea,  15,  16, 
18,  254-255,  256-257,  259-263, 
266,  283-284,  297,  301,  340-341, 
397,  399;  and  food  supply,  56- 
57,  152,  248-249,  269-270,  330, 
559-560;  conditions  for  great 
maritime  development,  36,  48, 
71,  142,  162,  248-249,  257-262, 
268-271,  282-284;  decline  of, 
284-286;  desert,  267,  302,  310; 
differentiated  people  of  inland 
and,  258,  271,  279-281,  321; 
early  cosmopolitan  civilization 
of,  84,  146,  259,  279-281;  ethnic 
amalgamation  in,  145,  274-276, 
279,  303,  424-426;  ethnic  con- 
trast of  hinterland  and,  145, 
271-274,  308,  433;  evolution  of 
seaports  on,  246-247,  250,  263- 
264,  282-283,  286;  expan- 
sion along,  107,  138,  338, 
389,  394;  importance  of,  143- 
144,  163,  242-244;  inner  edge 
of,  244-247,  252-253,  347;  inter- 
play of  forces  of  land  and  sea 
in,  71,  248-249,  254-255,  257, 
260-263,  277,  286-287,  330-331; 
islands  off,  264-266,  307;  Lingua 
franca  of,  276-277;  location  of, 
268,  280,  282-283;  maritime 
colonization  on,  146,  157,  196- 
197,  245-246,  250-253,  273,  433, 
454-455;  middleman  trade  of, 
137,  139,  196,  252,  270,  277-279, 
284,  309;  outer  edge  of,  3,  196- 


64-8 


INDEX 


197,  246-253,  274,  301-302,  320- 
322;  previous  habitat  of  people 
of,  266-267;  ratio  of  area  to 
length  of,  255-256,  399-400 

Cochin   China,   308 

Coire,  535 

Colberg,  284 

Colchester,  245,  264 

Col   de  Fenetre,   550 
la  Perche,  547 
la  Seigne,  550 

Colne  River  swamps,  370 

Cologne,  342 

Colombia,  United  States  of,  91, 
188,  259,  355,  476 

Colombo,  425 

Colonials,  differentiation  of,  20-22, 
120,  124,  437;  mind  '*,  124, 
189-190,  199-201,  232 

Colonization,  and  commerce,  96, 
252,  269;  and  periphery,  145- 
146,  162;  coasts  in,  146,  157, 
245-246,  250-253,  273,  433,  454- 
455;  conditions  for,  15,  459- 
460;  internal,  106,  110,  192, 
307,  460;  military,  91-92;  of 
European  nations,  122,  145, 
157,  189,  198-199;  tropical,  37, 
106-107,  114,  119,  120,  628.  See 
also  Historical  Movement 

Colorado  River,  352;  Canon,  524 

Columbia  River,  199,  262-263,  277, 
394 

Columbus,  Christopher,  118,  301, 
336-337,  390 

Comanche  Indians,  55,  90 

Comanians,    409 

Commander  Islands,  388 

Commerce,  expansion  of,  98,  100, 
104,  107,  123,  187 

Communes,    590,    592-594 

Comores  Islands,  451 

Congo  River,  157,  276,  320,  368; 
riparian  villages  of,  56,  182, 
297,  364 

Connaught,    361,    404 

Connecticut  River  settlements,  357, 
366 

Conservancy  Board,  352 

Constantinople,  17,  76,  111,  144, 
149,  216,  276,  339,  450,  509, 
614 

Continents,  area  of  the.  172,  254- 
255,  382-383,  391-392,  398;  ar- 
ticulations of,  131,  144-145,  254- 
255,  302,  396-398;  classifica- 
tion of  islands  and,  172,  333, 


381-382;        convergence        and 
ethnic  kinship  of,  304-305,  380- 

381,  384-385,    392;    extremities 
of,   287,   380-381,   385,   392-393; 
races  and  the,  131,  390-391;   re- 
lief and  structure  of,  341,  393- 
396,   474-475;    zonal   location   of 
the,   392-393,   613-614,   622.  For 
articulations,     see     also     Penin- 
sulas 

Cook,  Captain  James,  299,  337, 
444,  455,  464,  465 

Cook 's  Inlet,  137,  205,  278,  337 

Coorgs,   584 

Coosa  River,   217 

Copernicus,    79 

Copper  River,  137,  278 

Corcyra,   265,   459 

Cordilleras,  as  barrier,  394,  396, 
476,  546;  civilization  of  native 
states  of,  329,  617.  See  also 
Andes  and  Rocky  Mts. 

Corfu,  427,  447,  453 

Corinth,  13,  250;  Canal,  409;  Gulf 
of,  250 

Cornice  Road,  536 

Corn  Laws,  52 

Cornwall  Peninsula,  397-398,  403- 
406,  421 

Coromandel  Coast,  260,  284 

Corsica,  35,  264,  404,  422,  428, 
440,  443,  446,  447 

Cossacks,  as  fur  traders,  10,  29; 
semi-nomadic  border  police,  7, 
234-237,  368,  488,  497 

Cote,  364-366 

Cotentin   Peninsula,  397 

Corn-land.  272,  371,  400 

Cracow,  342 

Crannogs,  319 

Creek   Indians,   93,   217-218,   562 

Cremona,   326 

Crete,  colonies  of,  123,  274,  445, 
459 ;  early  and  differentiated 
civilization  of,  12,  214,  415-416, 
436-437,  465;  later  retardation 
of,  430,  443;  sea  power  of,  417, 
445;  thalassic  island,  131,  191, 

382,  427 

Crimea,  234,  235,  237,  274,  303, 
312,  397-398,  400,  409,  478,  493, 
547,  572 

Croatians,   136 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  373 

Crow  Indians,  98 

Crusades,  69,  99,  111,  149,  192, 
303,  427,  546 


INDEX 


649 


Cuba,     188,     256,     429-431,     452; 

native    race    of,    178,    303,    406, 

438 

Cumberland  Gap,  44,  474,  544 
Cumberland  Plateau,   23,   113,  534 
Cumberland       Biver       settlements, 

228,   343-344,   349 
Curasao,  453 
Cuttyhunk   Island,   253 
Cuxhaven,  247 
Cuyos,  420 
Cyclades    Islands,    265,    399,    416, 

440,  443,  446,  447 
Cyprus,    154,  264,  427,  431 
Gyrene,  454 
Czechs,    224,    360 

Dacia,  86,  92 

Daghestan,    579 

Ball,  W.  H.,  389,  395 

Dalmatia,  coast  of,  257-253,  261- 
262 

Damaon,   165 

Damara  tribes,  41,  298,  498,  583 

Damascus.  505,  507,  535 

Danes,  area  of,  180-181,  183;  in 
Britain,  134,  372,  422;  mari- 
time colonies  of,  249,  300-301, 
426 

Dantzig,  246 

Danube  Eiver,  as  a  boundary,  83, 
85,  216,  230,  361-362,  539,  553; 
mouth  of,  130,  350-352;  valley, 
7,  30,  41,  258,  493,  533;  valley 
highway,  4-5,  27,  44-45,  339, 
482,  532;  valley,  race  elements 
in,  85-86,  117,  136,  186,  360- 
361,  391;  valley  states,  139, 
177,  186 

Dardanelles,  337 

Darel  Valley,  594 

Darfur,  140',  218,  526,  571 

Darjeeling,  523,  531-532,  551,  552, 
557 

Darwin,  Charles,  33-35,  115,  169- 
170,  174,  179,  411 

Deccan,  104,  391,  398,  402,  403, 
538,  610,  616 

Delagoa  Bay,  140,  263 

Delaware   Bay,   253,   260,   286 

Delaware  Indians,  70,  77,  87,  89, 
93,  116 

Delaware  River,  5,  77,  108,  253, 
369 

Delhi,  6,  509 

Delos,  425,  426,  453;  Confeder- 
acy of,  429 

Delphi,  111 


Denmark,  257,  262,  311,  314,  351, 
403,  445,  447.  See  also  Jutland 
and  Zealand 

Denver,    528 

Derge,    578,    583 

Deserts,  483-515;  as  barriers,  43- 
44,  215,  360,  400;  climatic  con- 
trol in,  607,  614;  of  the  Arctic 
regions,  485-486,  560.  See  also 
Nomads,  Steppes  and  Oases 

Differentiation,  and  area,  112,  122- 
123,  161,  169-170,  382,  421;  and 
natural  conditions,  33-34;  as 
effect  of  dispersal,  77-78,  115- 
116;  effect  of  contrasted  environ- 
ments upon,  137,  160-161,  382, 
393,  478;  effect  of  isolation 
upon,  21-22,  76,  115,  117-118, 
121,  125,  133-134,  169-174,  293, 
303,  333,  380,  385,  393,  404-405, 
411-412,  414,  416,  595-596,  598; 
effect  of  relief  upon,  112-113, 
160-161,  393,  477;  natural  checks 
to,  119-121,  393;  relation  of 
different  soils  to,  112,  161,  480 
481,  525.  See  also  Climate 

Dinaric   Alps,    258,    300 

Diiika  negroes,  41,  325 

Diodorus   Siculus,  325 

Diomede  Islands,  305,  388,  424 

Dioscoridis,   425 

Dismal  Swamp,  371 

Dissentis,  598 

Ditmarscher,  372 

Diu  Island,   165,  431 

Dnieper  Eiver,  234,  353,  371;  line 
of  Russian  expansion,  140,  162, 
339,  348;  Tartars  in  valley  of, 
7,  58,  368,  490 

Dniester  River,  224 

Dogger  Bank,  332 

Dollart,  324 

Don  River,  58,  162,  234-235,  490, 
493 

Doncaster,   245 

Dora  Baltea  Valley,  222,  356,  536, 
548,  550,  553 

Dora  Riparia  Valley,  222,  536 

Dordrecht,   246 

Dorian   invasion,   78-79 

Drake,  Sir  Francis,  406 

Draper,  John  W.,  328-329 

Drave  River,  85,  186,  361 

Dravidians,  104,  403,  526,  598 

Drummond    Island,    448 

Dry  Tortugas,  441 

Dualla  tribe,  277-278,  369 

Duff  Island,  299 


650 


INDEX 


Duluth,  375 

Duna  River,  348,  353,  371 

Duoro  River,  216 

Durance  River,  536 

Dutch,  in  America,  5,  107-108,  157, 
375;  in  the  East  Indies,  96, 
107,  119,  265,  285;  in  South 
Africa,  18,  48,  106,  119;  mari- 
time expansion  of,  28-29,  123, 
271,  300-301,  310;  national 
spirit  of,  180,  183.  See  also 
Boers,  and  Holland 

Dwina  River,  140,  162,  340,  348, 
353 

Dyaks,    65 

Dyrrachium,    258 

Earth,  area  of,  168;  modified  by 
man,  120;  unity  of,  30,  68,  121, 
171-172 

East  Africa,  Arab  expansion  in, 
84,  146,  192-193,  252-253,  265, 
268-270,  275,  276;  British  in, 
431;  Portuguese  in,  157,  196, 
265,  269;  trading  stations  on 
coast  of,  164,  265,  309-310 

East  Cape,   255,  305,  388 

Easter  Isle,  300,  389,  417,  440, 
455,  459,  462,  465 

Eastern  Empire,  117,  216 

East  Indies,  see  Sunda  Islands 

Eboe  tribes,   276-277 

Ebro  River,  362 

Echidnades    Islands,   410 

Ecuador,  30,  440,  476,  561 

Effects  of  environment,  direct  and 
indirect,  18-20,  22,  41-42,  46, 
161,  438,  494,  608-609;  physical, 
1,  33-40,  46,  119-120,  279,  299, 
504,  607-608,  626;  psychical,  1, 
18-20,  22-23,  40,  41-43,  46,  195, 
199-201,  299-300,  512,  514,  582, 
585;  social  and  economic,  38,  43, 
46,  228,  327,  585,  632 

Egypt,  75,  99,  122,  188,  415-416; 
civilization  of,  7,  22-23,  328- 
329,  358,  393;  coasts  of,  266- 
267,  281,  352;  desert  trade  of, 
505-507;  expansion  into  Syria, 
132,  152,  477,  545;  nomad  con- 
quests of,  58,  104,  176,  495; 
naturally  defined  location  of,  12, 
144,  197,  213-214,  359-360; 
vicinal  location  of,  151-152,  283, 
400.  See  also  Nile  Valley 

Ehrenreich,  Paul,  34,  38 

Eider  River,  403 

Ekaterina  Harbor,   141 


Elaro,  250 

Elamites,  402-403 

Elba  Isle,  264,  440,  441,  457 

Elbe  River,  estuary,  185,  246-247, 
340,  351;  lowlands,  185,  191, 
324,  371 

Elburz  piedmont  road,  528 

El  Golea,  152 

El  Hasa,  431,  498,  505 

Elis,  110 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  332,  406 

Ellice  Islands  77,  463 

Elliot  Islands,  428 

Emden-Dortmund  Canal,  351 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  199,  413, 
415 

Emigration,  93-96,  123;  from  is- 
lands, 459-461;  from  mountains, 
579-582 

Endogamy,   in    mountains,    587 

Engadine,  113,  359,  534,  593 

England,  area  of,  179,  420;  coast 
of,  260,  262,  473;  colonies  of, 
16-18,  37,  51,  96,  123,  145,  146, 
154,  157,  198-,  343,  375,  458- 
459;  conditions  for  maritime 
development  in,  15,  28,  70,  294- 
295,  300-301,  314-315,  461; 
commerce  of,  67,  96,  263-264, 
458-459;  distribution  of  popula- 
tion in,  65,  477,  527,  564;  early 
outskirt  location  of,  2-3,  12,  13, 
149,  150;  insular  location  of, 
6,  133,  134,  182,  420,  437-439; 
its  leadership  of  European  civili- 
zation, 414-415,  465;  races  and 
ethnic  elements,  74,  75,  83,  93, 
146,  176,  184,  237,  275,  421-422; 
relief  of,  52,  475,  478,  480; 
sea  route  to  India  from,  154, 
427;  vicinal  location  of,  134, 
137,  397 

English  Channel,  150,  214,  259, 
286,  296,  314,  421,  473 

English  people,  differentiation  of, 
413,  418;  differentiation  of  lan- 
guage of,  175,  420;  expansion 
of,  44,  66,  114,  185,  189,  193, 
198-199,  211-212,  265,  271,  310, 
343,  432,  498 

Epaminondas,  591 

Epidamnos,  459 

Epirus,  265,  535 

Equatorial   Current,   30,   389 

Equatorial  Lakes.  297,  406 

Erio  Canal,  5,  540 

Erie   Indians,   89 

Eritrea,  611 


INDEX 


651 


Erz  Mts.,  224,  360,  527,  536,  579 

Eskimos,  coast  settlements  of,  152, 
154,  248,  249,  299,  304,  330, 
624;  distribution  of,  88,  107, 
304,  387,  422,  424;  influence  of 
climate  upon  civilization  of,  10, 
41,  58,  63,  611,  624-625;  race 
of,  76,  123,  173,  382,  385,  387, 
388,  395,  419 

Esk  River,  236 

Essartage,  182 

Essequibo  River,  320 

Essex,  74 

Estland,  272,  400 

Etah,   207,   624 

Ethiopia,  99,  358,  372 

Ethnology,  and  geography,  121- 
122 

Etruscans,  97,  180,  264 

Euboea,  381,  401 

Euphrates  River,  as  highway,  296, 
337,  345,  349;  plains,  152,  230, 
476;  nomad  invasion  of,  7,  489, 
492.  See  also  Mesopotamia 

Eurasia,  area  of,  169-170,  172,  179, 
383 ;  Arctic,  172,  485-486 ;  coast- 
line, 400;  location  of,  383-385 

Europe,  Asiatic  side  of,  129,  148, 
254,  348;  Atlantic  front  of,  30, 
82,  99,  149,  282-283,  301,  398; 
climate  of,  109,  613-614,  618, 
620-621;  location  of,  149,  150, 
380-381,  383;  peripheral  articu- 
lations of,  131,  144,  254,  255, 
258,  264,  394,  399,  405;  races 
of,  74,  76,  104,  110,  112,  121, 
477;  varied  structure  and  relief 
of,  117,  174,  199-200,  311,  339, 
383,  389,  390,  394,  474-475,  478, 
539 

Europeans,  expansion,  82,  106-107, 
145,  151,  174,  311;  trade  with 
the  Orient,  82,  270,  309-310,  616 

Everglades,   371 

Evolution,  of  geographic  in- 
fluences, 24-25,  282-283,  285, 
433-434,  436,  444,  561-562;  of 
geographic  relations,  12-14,  67- 
69,  76,  78,  149-150,  282-283,  301- 
302,  311-313 

Expansion,  commercial  and  polit- 
ical, 65-68 ;  commercial  and 
ethnic,  196-197;  ethnic  and  po- 
litical, 183-187,  190-192;  exces- 
sive, 134,  212-213,  343-344; 
geographic  conditions  for,  139, 
343-345,  482;  geographic  marks 
of,  83,  139,  161-163,  165,  208- 


212;   in  new  and  old  countries, 
189-190,    198-200 

Falkland  Islands,  35,  44,  426-427 

Faroe  Islands,  88,  137,  264,  298, 
387,  420,  432,  443,  448 

Farralone  Islands,   29 

Farsistan,    507 

Farther  India,  Asiatic  peninsula, 
131,  398-400;  Chinese  in,  307- 
308 ;  intercontinental  location 
of,  405;  river  valleys  of,  259, 
534;  river-boat  people,  322-323 

Fayal,    381 

Fenland  of  England,  245;  reclama- 
tion of,  107-108,  286,  324-325; 
refuges  and  strongholds  in,  370- 
372 

Fernando  Noronha  Isle,  153,  440 

Fernando  Po  Island,  441 

Fern  Pass,  537 

Ferro,   419 

Feuds,  in  mountains  and  deserts, 
113,  237,  570,  591-592 

Fez,  506 

Fezzan,  502 

Fiesch,   566 

Fiji  Islands,  282,  382,  446;  effects 
of  small,  insular  area,  455-456, 
460,  463-464;  government  of,  6, 
56,  444;  races  in,  77,  165,  391 

Finisterre  Province,  279 

Finland,  400 ;  maritime  develop- 
ment of,  15,  71,  144,  262;  Rus- 
sian occupation  of,  119,  177, 
181,  189;  Swedes  in  coasts  of, 
225,  272,  304 

Finmarken  Province,  152-153,  330, 
624 

Finns,  in  Eussia,  77,  119,  159, 
165,  224-226,  348;  in  Scan- 
dinavia, 119,  218 

Fiord  coasts,   261-262 

Firenze   River,   356-357 

Firth  of  Forth,  273,  370 
Tay,  304 

Fisheries,  and  maritime  expansion, 
187,  330-331,  406,  618;  and  sea- 
manship, 295,  299,  331-332;  in 
Arctic  economy  and  settlement, 
152,  207,  248-249,  299,  330,  486, 
624-625 ;  in  small  or  sterile 
lands,  15,  261,  264,  269,  305, 
449-450,  455,  456;  river,  108, 
322 

Fisher  tribes,  56-57 

Fiume,  14,  140,  258 

Flanders,  284,  338 


652 


INDEX 


Flemish    refugees,    88,    275 

Floating  gardens,   320,   322,   569 

Florence,   99 

Flores,  159,  208,  446 

Florida,  93,  111,  371,  406,  618; 
Spanish,  142,  229,  238,  256 

Fohr  Isle,  461 

Fontainebleau,  354 

Food-quest,  and  migration,  76,  80, 
132,  389 

Fooil  supply,  advance  from  natural 
to  artificial  basis  of,  60-61;  in 
Arctic  regions,  299,  624-625; 
in  deserts  and  steppes,  490-492, 
503-504;  in  mountains,  37,  563- 
565,  579,  586;  physical  effects 
of  scant,  34-35,  39 

Foota  Jallon  Mts.,  325 

Forests,  as  barriers,  81-83,  160, 
476,  483,  521,  561;  as  boun- 
daries, 216,  218,  370;  hunting 
tribes  of,  117,  158,  609,  614, 
625 

Formosa,  159,  308,  381,  442; 
ethnic  elements  in,  418,  423, 
428,  439,  460,  599 

Forster,  George,  455 

Forts,  frontier,   140,  530 

Fox  River,  98,  364 

France,  coasts  and  maritime  de- 
velopment of,  16,  256,  294,  375; 
colonial  policy  of,  16,  51,  198- 
199,  294 ;  distribution  of  popu- 
lation in,  19-20,  65,  477,  564; 
ethnic  elements  in,  46,  74,  89, 
115,  187,  338,  422;  inland  water- 
ways of,  338,  342,  353-354;  lo- 
cation of,  133,  141,  149,  151, 
294;  natural  boundaries  of,  214, 
256,  535,  542 ;  political  expan- 
sion of  in  Europe,  6,  185-186, 
198-199,  351,  482;  relief  of,  19- 
20,  113,  259,  353,  480,  525,  533, 
562.  See  also  Gaul 

Franconia,  19-20,  124,  579 

Freeman,  E.  A.,  151,  164 

French,  expansion  of,  in  North 
America,  44,  134,  190,  214,  338, 
342-343,  348-349,  350.  See  also 
Canada;  expansion  in  Africa, 
157,  212  498,  511;  in  Asia,  165; 
language,  dialects  of,  175,  360, 
419.  598 

French  Congo,  481 

Frenssen,   G.,    112 

Friendly   Islands.      See   Tonga 

Friesland,    215.    371-372 

Frigid    Zone,    100,    611,    623-624, 


633  634.     See  also  Arctic 

Frirniliujis,   222,   581 

Frisches  llaff,  246 

Frisian    Islands,   417,  420,  461 

Frisians,  85,  480 

Frontiers,  see  Boundaries 

Fuegians,  298,  382.  See  also 
Tierra  del  Fuego 

Fuerteventura,  419,  462 

Fulbe,   115,  135,  492,  496 

Furca  Pass,  534-535 

Fur  trade,  and  expansion,  29,  97, 
98,  134,  187,  211-212,  343-344; 
and  river  highways,  47,  342-344, 
346,  364-366,  540;  climatic  fac- 
tors in,  10,  47,  212-213,  343- 
344,  618-619;  economy  of  the, 
47,  211-212,  344;  in  Alaska,  29, 
278;  in  Siberia,  10,  29,  44,  344; 
in  United  States,  211,  530.  See 
also  Canada 

Fusan,  306,  405 

Futuma  Island,  448 

Galapagos  Islands,  440 

Galicia,  74,  86,  258,  580 

Galilee  hills,  545 

Galla  nomads,  495 

Gallatin,  Albert,  354 

Gambia  River,  370 

Gambier  Island,  449 

Ganges  River,  360 ;  Aryans  in 
valley  of,  6,  104,  596;  nomad 
conquest  of,  109,  402 

Gao,  367 

Garbyang,  551 

Gargunza,  552 

Garhwal,  553,  572,  584 

Garonne   River,   35,   338,  353,   361 

Gartok,    208,    552 

Gash  River,  500 

Gates  of  Bamian,  538 

Gates  of  Herat,  163,  498,  544 

Gauchos,   485,   509 

Gaul,  Cisalpine,  74,  180,  352; 
native  peoples  of  Transalpine, 
361,  369,  562;  Roman  expan- 
sion into,  2,  66,  74,  82,  97,  533 

Gaza,   507 

Geolvink    Bay,    321 

Geest,  112,  245 

Geinmi  Pass,  537 

Geneva,  533,  581;  Canton  of,  221, 
527,  564,  581 

Genghis  Khan,  494,  495,  503,  544 

Genial  Period,  168-169,  208 

Genoa,  99,  300;  decline  of,  13, 
301;  location  of,  149,  283-284, 


INDEX 


653 


528,  547-548;  medieval  hold- 
ings of,  3,  271,  303,  427 

Geographic  factors,  interplay  of, 
11-12,  14-18,  28,  129,  131,  134, 
261,  286-287,  557,  607-608; 
multiplicity  of,  1-2,  11-12,  14, 
29-30,  59-60,  131,  269,  279,  282, 
286-287,  342,  347,  363,  380,  422, 
432-433,  442,  476,  619,  622,  626- 
627;  stability  of,  2-8 

Geographical  horizon,  69,  82,  89, 
98,  187,  195,  283,  301,  303,  311. 
330,  490 

Georgia,  102,  481,  562 

Gepidae,  85 

German  East  Africa,  260,  276, 
559 

German  Southwest  'Africa,  263, 
266,  346-347,  498 

Germans,  area  of  ethnic  stock, 
180;  ethnic  boundaries  of,  116- 
117,  136,  155,  211,  222-224, 
229-230;  expansion  of,  155, 
176,  189,  191-192,  198,  209, 
211,  229-231,  272,  479,  543,  627- 
628;  language  and  dialects  of, 
175,  191-192,  360-361,  479,  598. 
See  also  Teutonic  race 

Germany,  coast  of,  13-14,  255-256, 
259,  262,  300,  304,  332;  colonies 
of,  96,  114,  145,  158,  431,  482; 
expansion  of  Empire  of,  110, 
186;  188,  229-231,  351;  location 
of,  133,  135,  140,  141,  144,  149- 
150;  medieval  claim  to  Italy,  4, 
522,  539,  542;  varied  relief  of, 
20,  179,  477,  479,  522,  525,  558; 
rivers  of,  30,  342,  350-351;  Ro- 
man civilization  in,  97,  533 

Ges  tribes,  56,  101,  110,  272 

Gettysburg,   535 

Ghadames   oasis,   491,   506 

Ghat  oasis,  491,  502 

Ghazni,    554 

Ghent,  342 

Giamda,  228 

Gibraltar,  129,  154,  219,  249,  254 

Gila  River,   263,   329,   346 

Gilbert  Islands,  123,  448,  455,  463 

Gilbert,  Sir  Humphrey,  406 

Gilead,  balm  of,  505-506 

Gilgit  Valley,  568,  587,  589 

Gilolo,   444 

Gilyaks,   174,  388,  418 

Girgenti,   443 

Glacial  Period,   168,  208 

Glarus   Canton,   359,   574,   593 

Glasgow-  149,  247 


Goa,   165 

Gobi  Desert,  27,  497,  503 

Goklan  nomads,  491,  499 

Gomal  Pass,  554 

Gomera,  419 

Gondokora,   325 

Gonds,   596 

Goshen  in  Egypt,  505 

Gosnold's   colony,   253 

Goths,    migration    of,    77,    86,    87, 

97,    109.      See    also    Ostrogoths 

and   Visigoths 
Gotland,  Island  of,  304,  382,  426, 

Gournia,  416 

Graaf  Reinet,  232,  369 

Granada,  mountains  of,  537,  567 

Gran   Chaco,   297 

Grasslands,  see  Steppes 

Graswirthschaft,  574,  577 

Graubiinden,  222,  359,  564-565. 
593 

Great  Appalachian  Valley,  534-535 

Great  Basin,   102,  394 

Great  Britain,  Celts  in,  184,  304 
371,  403-404,  418;  early  hill 
settlements  of,  563;  insular  lo- 
cation of,  45,  213-214,  264,  409, 
434-435,  445 ;  large  area  and  pol- 
itical autonomy  of,  381,  399,  401, 
416,  432;  lowlands  and  high- 
lands of,  52,  113,  479;  marine 
of,  70;  vicinal  location  of,  134. 
See  also  Angles,  Saxons,  Norse, 
England  and  Scotland 

Great   Divide,   394 

Great  Fish  Bay,  263 

Great  Lakes,  as  an  inland  sea,  66, 
201,  247,  313,  375;  in  the  fur 
trade,  5,  342,  540,  618;  line  of 
inland  expansion,  44,  162,  338, 
343,  354 

Great  Plains,  of  the  United 
States,  483 

Great  Russia,   137,  479 

Great  Smoky  Mts.,  535 

Great  Wall  of  China,  226-227,  234 
493 

Greece,  civilization  of  ancient,  3, 
18,  84,  192,  214,  259,  416-417; 
climate  and  relief  in,  619;  col- 
onies of,  79,  96,  138,  145,  164, 
187,  196,  250,  252,  265,  272-274, 
281  303,  312;  differentiation  of 
culture  in,  22,  113,  146;  early 
maritime  development  in,  6,  13, 
15,  107,  162,  187,  259,  266,  268, 


654 


INDEX 


297,  302;  geographic  and  politi- 
cal   dismemberment,     131,     177, 
183,  195-196,  402,  591-592,  595; 
independence    of,    4,    285,    546; 
intercontinental  location  of,  3-4, 
131,   259,   265,   397,   405;    small, 
naturally    defined    area    of,    12, 
134,    177,    180,    197,    214,    342, 
476,    478;    offshore    islands    of, 
264-265,  447 
Greek  Church,   232,   339 
Greenland,    Arctic    location,    129, 
409,  448,  609,  633;  coast  settle- 
ments in,  152,  207,  249,  261-262, 
386-387,  559;  Norse  colonies  in, 
88,  302,  422,  436 
Greifswald,   284 
Grenoble,  534 
Grimsby,   264 
Grimsel  Pass,  524 
Grinnell  Land,  207 
Grotius,  Hugo,  315 
Guadeloupe,  452 
Guam,   172,  300 
Guanacos,  178 
Guanches,  88,  172,  177,  419.     See 

also  Canary  Islanders 
Guano   deposits,   220 
Guatemala,  157 

Guiana,  British,  106,  626;   Dutch, 
108;   French,  220,  441;   Indians 
of,    113,    272,    583 
Guinea  Coast,  low,  swampy  littoral, 
245,    259-260,    262,    279;    native 
tribes   of,    267,    279-280;    politi- 
cal holdings  on,  157,  271;  trade 
of,  97,  245,  264,  276-278 
Gulf  of  Bothnia,  272 

California,  296,  352 
Cambay,  6 
Corinth,  186 
Finland,    478-479 
Guinea,  145,  441 
Mexico,  low  plains  of,  259, 
260,     343;     Mississippi 
tributary    of,    44,    162, 
338,         354;         United 
States    coast    on,    142, 
162,  256,  286 
Naples,  453 
Oman,  254 
Siam,  307 

Gulf  States  of  U.  S.,  161,  619 
Gulf    Stream,    30,    141,    336,    613, 

634 

Gurgen  Eiver,  493 
Gurkhas   of   Nepal,   581,   596,  619 
Gustavus  Adolphus,  581 


Gutjerat    Peninsula,   400 
Gyaneina,  552 

Haarlem  Meer,  324 

Habitable  area,  168-169,  206-208, 
330,  610 

Habitants,  92,   175,  222,  364-366 

Habitat,  effect  of  new,  46-48,  107, 
120-121,  135,  175,  194,  199- 
201,  221,  279-280,  623;  effect  of 
previous,  16,  25-27,  88,  266-267, 
273,  280,  299 

Haida  Indians,  coast  fisher  tribe, 
36,  57,  163,  248,  262;  civiliza- 
tion of,  395,  417,  419 

Hainon,  442 

Hajikhak  Pass,  538 

Hallingdal,   549 

Hamburg,  149,  150,  246,  283,  341, 
347 

Hami,  501 

Hamilcar   Barca,    151 

Hamitic  race,  7,  104,  117,  358,  559 

Hammerfest,  618 

Hanchow,  341 

Hangchow,  352 

Hannibal,   542,   544 

Hanover,  370 

Hanse  Towns,  maritime  trade  of, 
13,  150,  196,  261,  284,  304,  331, 
426;  thalassic  location  of,  13, 
136,  304,  311,  314;  League  of, 
244-245,  286,  308,  339,  342,  348, 
426,  429 ;  sites  of,  250 

Hapai,  449 

Hardanger  Fiord,  340 

Hartford    Convention,   23 

Harz  Mts.,  527,  555 

Hauran,  58 

Hausa  traders,  118,  511 

Haute  Savoie,  220 

Hautes-Alpes.  564 

Havel  River,  370 

Havre,  246 

Hawaiian  Islands.  American  ex- 
pansion to,  98-99,  187,  285; 
Asiatics  in,  30,  460;  checks  to 
population  in  old,  462-465 ;  ef- 
fect of  climate  in,  628 ;  oceanic 
way  station,  381,  413,  426,  432, 
438;  population  of,  165,  448 

Hawes,  Harriet  Boyd,  416 

Hawkins,   Sir   John,  406 

Hayil  oasis,  153 

Hayti,  Arawaks  and  Caribs  in, 
100-101,  265.  338,  406 

Heat  belts,  100,  612,  617-618.  Se« 
Climate 


INDEX 


655 


Hebrews,  conquest  of  Canaan,  79. 
494 

Hebrides    Islands,    184 

Hebron,   496 

Hedin,  Sven,  57 

Heilprin,  A.,   208 

Heimey  Island,  449 

Hejaz,  498 

Helgoland   Island,   172,  420 

Heliopolis    (Egypt)    492 

Hellas,  111,  397,  401-402;  535; 
migration  into,  77-78,  404.  See 
also  Greece 

Hellespont,  249 

Helmud  River,  as  boundary,  362 

Helots,  430 

Helsingfors,    272 

Helvetian    migration,    553 

Hemisphere,  Northern,  63-64,  179, 
312-313,  392-393;  Southern,  312- 
313,  392-393;  Eastern,  384-386, 
390-391;  Western,  384-386,  392. 
See  also  Americas 

Henry  III.,  372 

Itenry,  the  Navigator,  432 

Heraclea,    252 

Herat,  491,  538 

Hercules,  327 

Herder,  Johann  Gottfried  von,  11, 
68 

Herero,   cattle-breeders,   41,   55 

Hereward   the   Saxon,   372 

Heri-rud   River,   502,   538 

Hermupolis,    453 

Herodotus,  7,  99,  281,  296,  319, 
488,  493,  509 

Herzegovina,    177 

ITiqrhlands,   see   Mountains 

Himalaya  Mts.,  37,  336,  356,  442; 
as  barrier  boundary,  18,  215, 
228,  523,  543-544,  551-553; 
Mongoloid  peoples  of,  136,  526, 
534,  543 ;  piedmont  border  zone 
of,  41,  526,  531-532,  543; 
passes  of,  100,  543,  587;  small 
states  of,  359,  588,  594;  typical 
mountain  life  in,  207-208,  572, 
575,  583-584,  587,  588,  616 

Hindu  Kush  Mts.,  41,  122,  568; 
as  barrier,  163,  215,  536;  pass 
routes  across,  529,  536,  538,  551 

Hindu  religion,  100,  526.  See  al- 
so Brahmanism 

Hinterlands,  142,  143,  256-259, 
403 

Hippo,   250 

Historical  Movement,  amalgama- 
tion of  races  in,  45-46,  83-86, 


88-93,  97,  117-118,  120 ;  as- 
similation of  culture  by,  83-84, 
86-88,  99,  117-121,  135,  174-175; 
barriers  to,  81-83,  97,  132,  212- 
215,  242-244,  390,  473,  521,  525, 
532;  climatic  factors  in,  104- 
109 ;  colonization  as  form  of, 
75-76,  78,  94-96,  106,  107;  com- 
mercial expansion,  78,  96-100, 
104,  107,  187-188,  269,  300-304; 
complex  movements,  84-86,  88- 
89,  92,  122;  differentiation 
through,  102,  110,  112-118,  122- 
123,  391,  393;  direction  of,  74, 
78,  86,  97,  102,  104,  109-111, 
154,  394-395,  533-535;  disper- 
sion of  peoples,  93-95,  122-124, 
155;  emigration,  93-96;  evolu- 
tion of,  75-78,  80-84,  104;  ex- 
pansion, 80,  96-97,  171,  187-188; 
expansion  of  European  peoples, 
106-107,  109,  114,  119-120; 
forms  of,  75-76,  78-80;  geogra- 
phic factors  in,  5-6,  43-46,  79, 

88,  133,   293-295,   393,   475-476; 
geographical    horizon    and,    82, 

89,  98;    importance  of,   25,   75, 
78-80,     84,      122,      133;      modi- 
fication  in   transit,   86-88,    122; 
nature    of,    75-78,    80,    86,    88; 
psychical  motives  in,  111-112;  re- 
ligion as  motive  in,  98-100,  111- 
112,    185,    187,    235,    237,    26S, 
275;    retreat    and    flight,    80-81, 
83,   92-94;    slavery   as  form   of, 
90-91;     war    as   'form    of,    75- 
78,    83-85,    88-93;    zonal    limits 
of,  100-107,  113,  116.     See  also 
Migrations  and  Nomadism 

History,  relations  between  geog- 
raphy and,  10-11,  51,  68-69, 
262,  475,  545;  universal,  30,  82, 
292-295,  311 

Hoangho,  floods  and  dikes  of,  176, 
326-329;  valley,  7,  227,  352,  354, 
499 

Holland,  area  of,  177,  180,  183; 
inland  waterways  of,  150,  ?42, 
351,  353,  355,  473;  maritime  lo- 
cation of,  15-16,  48,  108,  130, 
137,  150,  284,  331-332,  351,  461; 
population  of,  its  distribution, 
112,  245,  370,  477,  480;  reclama- 
tion of  land  in,  80,  107-108, 
245,  324;  spirit  of  freedom  in, 
183,  371-372;  tropical  posses- 
sions of,  51,  96,  616.  See  also 
Dutch 


656 


INDEX 


Holoarctic  realm,  385 

Holston   River,  370 

Hondo,    176,   399,   557.      See    also 

Japan 

Honduras,  394 
Hongkong,    187,    347,   367 
Horse,  34-35,  64,  392 
Horticulture,     in     oases,     501-502, 

559 

Hospice,  549 

Hottentots,  48,  297-298;  decline 
and  withdrawal  of,  87,  93,  106, 
114,  119,  160;  ethnic  stock  of, 
35,  158;  hybrids  of  Dutch  and, 
116,  623;  pastoral  nomads,  35, 
434,  583 

Hova  Malays,  79,  384,  423,  588- 
589,  627 

Hue,  M.,  travels  of,  227,  511 

Hudson  Bay,  47,  154,  302,  349; 
Company,  10,  60,  61,  114,  192, 
274 

Hudson,  Henry,  337 

Hudson  River,  Dutch  settlements 
on,  108,  366,  369,  375;  tidal 
course  of,  246,  337;  and  Mo- 
hawk route,  5,  130,  342,  354, 
375,  550,  554 

Huguenots,  dispersion  of,  21,  93- 
94,  111,  237,  275,  439,  454 

Hull    (England)    264 

Human  race,  unity  of,  30,  68,  121, 
171-172,  292,  333;  wide  distri- 
bution of,  171,  293,  610-611 

Humber  River,   44,   245,   338,  370 

Humboldt   Bay,   321 

Humboldt  River,   346 

Hungarians,  valley  dislribution  of, 
45,  135,  361.  See  also  Mag- 
yars 

Hungary,  central  location  of,  14, 
136,  139-140,  143;  ethnic  ele- 
ments in,  92,  136,  148 ;  grain  of, 
150;  mountains  of,  579 

Huns,  invasion  of  Europe,  5,  7, 
77,  85,  109,  111,  216,  439,  492, 
493 

Hunting  tribes,  geographic  condi- 
tions for,  35,  117,  158,  162,  445- 
446,  609,  6X4,  625;  land  bond 
among,  55-56,  61-65,  155; 
savage  economy  of,  10,  47,  212; 
weak  tenure  of  land,  60,  80-81, 
184 

Huntingdon,  245 

Hunza  mountaineers,  541,  568,  586- 
587,  589.  594 

Huron  Indians,  368 


Hybridization  of  races,  climatic 
factor  in,  10,  104,  107,  118,  120, 
135,  628;  on  boundaries,  119, 
226,  599;  on  coasts,  274-275; 
on  thalassic  islands,  427-428 

Hydrographic  centers,  44,  140, 
162,  348-349,  353-354 

Hyksos,  conquest  of  Egypt,  7,  109, 
151,  176,  495 

Hyperboreans,  35-36,  172,  385,  486, 
624-625.  See  also  Arctic 

lapodes,   553 

Iberian  Peninsula,  area,  398-399; 
Atlantic  location  of,  258,  406, 
630;  Celts  in,  164;  intercon- 
tinental location,  28-29,  110, 

132,  405,  537;  naturally  defined, 

133,  401,  404,  537;  Saracens  in, 
110,  132,  231.     See  also  Spain 

Iberian  race,  75,  86 

Iceland,  35,  262,  446,  448-450; 
Celts  in,  88,  298,  387;  climate 
of,  442,  460,  631,  634;  natural- 
ly defined  location,  45,  183,  432, 
436-437;  Norse  in,  89,  129,  422, 
432,  439;  oceanic  island,  381, 
386-387,  435-436,  442;  way 
station  to  Greenland,  129,  264, 
386 

Ichang,  341,  367 

Ichu  grass,  64,  575 

Idaho,  296 

Igorotes,  mountaineers,  279,  532, 
570 

Hi  River  Valley,  110,  235 

Iller   River,  361 

Illinois,  112,  375;  River,  364 

Illyrian  Coast,   459 

Illyrlan   race,   402 

Inca  Empire,  civilization  of,  91, 
160,  200,  382,  569;  location  of, 
108,  374.  See  also  Andean1 
states 

India,  area  of,  145,  342,  398-399; 
agriculture  in,  329,  551,  616; 
civilization  of,  309,  329;  coast- 
line of,  18,  254,  399;  colonial 
and  commercial  peoples  in,  107, 
119,  138,  157,  269,  285;  distri- 
bution of  population  in,  60,  65, 
268,  403,  548,  614,  616;  emi- 
gration from,  106,  268,  626; 
ethnic  elements  of,  41,  102,  104, 
115,  136,  165,  526;  mountain 
boundaries  of,  228,  400,  523, 
525,  531-532,  536,  544,  551-533, 
589;  mountain  pass  routes  to, 


INDEX 


657 


see  Himalaya,  Suleiman  Moun- 
tains, and  Hindu  Kush  pass 
routes;  nomad  invaders  of,  7, 
46,  109,  142,  403,  496,  536;  pen- 
insular location,  399-400,  402- 
404,  583-584;  retardation  of,  18- 
19;  rainfall,  610,  614-615 

Indiana,    375 

Indian  Ocean,  as  an  enclosed  sea, 
308-3iO,  315,  425;  islands  of, 
285,  425,  451 ;  maritime  peoples 
of,  268-269;  navigation  in,  30, 
298,  308-309;  peninsulas  and  in- 
lets of,  254,  398;  trade  route 
of  northern,  17-18,  30,  270,  285, 
309-310,  400;  tropical  trade 
with  Europe,  6,  82,  149,  284- 
285 

Indians  of  America,  decline  of, 
92,  119,  170,  176-177;  ethnic 
origin  of,  102,  109,  3S7-389,  396, 
473 ;  ethnic  uniformity  of,  382, 
390,  608;  hunter  stage  of  de- 
velopment among,  55-56,  62-64, 
80,  281;  migrations  of,  55,  78, 
100,  102,  116,  394-395;  native 
civilizations  of,  389,  395-396; 
scattered  location  of,  114,  138, 
154-157,  159-160,  163,  177,  178, 
184;  tribal  territories  of,  54-57, 
61,  217,  219 

Indian  Territory,  372 

Indo-China,   104,  534 

Indus  River,  and  Oriental  trade 
route,  254,  337,  345;  mountain 
tributaries  of,  295,  356;  moun- 
tain valleys  of,  37,  550,  568, 
585 ;  nomad  invasions  of  low- 
land valley  of,  7,  46,  109,  142, 
402,  403,  536 

Industrialism,  in  relation  to  land, 
65,  67,  70 

Infanticide,   67,   463-464,   584-585 

Insalah  oasis,  491 

Inthas,    320 

Inn  River,  mountain  valley  of, 
359,  361,  534,  537,  539,  597 

Invernesshire,  450,  564 

lona  Isle,  436 

Ionian  Isles,  258,  459 

lonians,  78,  281,  459 

Ionian  Sea,  mare  dausum,  314 

Iran  Plateau,  476 

Irawadi   River,   259 

Ireland,  areas  of  Celtic  speech  in, 
404,  421;  Celts  of,  45,  184,  387, 
418;  climate  of,  615;  early 
emigration  from,  95-96,  461; 


Christianity    in,    418-419,    436; 
insular    character    and    location 
of,  264,  381,  397,  429,  435,  447; 
lake  villages  of,  319 ;  navigation 
in,      296-298;      Shannon      River 
boundary      in,      361 ;      Teutonic 
fringe  of,  184,  273 
Irish  Sea,  302 
Iron  Age,  387,  390,  434 
Iron  Gate,  361 
Iroquoian   stock,   54-55,    102.      See 

also  Cherokees  and  Tuscaroras 
Iroquois  Indians,  location  of,  130, 
138,     154-155,     209,     554;     war 
campaigns  of,  89,  93,   195,  368, 
535,  562 

Irrigation,  and  terrace  agriculture, 
26,  46,  456,  567,  568,  569-570, 
572;  factor  in  early  civilization, 
328-330;  factor  in  social  and 
political  union,  327-329,  356-357, 
359;  in  arid  lands,  7,  10,  108, 
163,  328-330,  356,  359,  361,  501- 
502;  river  canals  for,  352-353, 
356 

Irtysh  River  Valley,  113,  345 
Ischia,  Island  of,  440,  453.  457 
Isere  Valley,  534,  536,  550 
Ishmaelite  Arabs,  506,  510 
Islam,  see  Mohammedanism 
Islands,  advanced  agriculture  of, 
455-458,  569-570;  advanced 
navigation  of,  298-300 ;  area 
and  location  in  political  au- 
tonomy of,  '681-682,  424,  429, 
432;  artificial  checks  to  popula- 
tion in,  67,  461-465 ;  as  asylums, 
94,  409-410,  423,  436-439;  as 
convict  stations,  439-441 ;  as 
maritime  markets,  29,  250,  304, 
305,  321,  424-426,  453-454;  as 
maritime  way  stations,  29,  87- 
88,  153-154,  264-266,  338,  392, 
426-427;  climate  of,  450-453; 
conservative  and  radical  tenden- 
cies in,  412-414;  dense  popula- 
tions of,  447-454;  differentia- 
tion of  insular  peoples,  110,  133, 
172,  418-419,  421;  differentia- 
tion of  languages  in,  419-421; 
early  and  distinctive  civilization 
of,  214,  415-419,  435-437,  444; 
emigration  and  colonization 
from,  123,  459-461 ;  empires, 
444-445 ;  ethnic  sources  of  popu- 
lation in,  417-418,  422-424;  flora 
and  fauna  of,  34-35,  410-412, 
417,  434,  441-442,  445-446,  465; 


658 


INDEX 


importance  of  location  of,  381- 
382,  425-427,  431-433,  447;  iso- 
lation of,  401,  411-412,  414-415, 
417-421,  429-431;  isolation  and 
protection  of,  252-254,  367-368, 
409-410,  429-430,  434-438,  454; 
isolation  and  retardation  in,  411, 
420,  433-436,  443;  isolation  in 
oceanic,  381,  383-384,  386-387, 
411,  412,  422,  426-427,  431-432, 
440-441 ;  isolation  modified  by 
advanced  navigation,  412,  422- 
424;  limitation  of  small  area  in, 
43,  177-179,  252,  277,  509-411, 
415-417,  420,  421,  424,  429-431, 
434,  442-443,  445-446,  454-455, 
461 ;  mixed  population  of  tbalas- 
sic,  304,  382,  424-428;  political 
detacbability  of,  426-429,  431- 
432;  relation  of  peninsulas  to, 
409-410;  relief  of,  446;  remains 
of  broken  empires  in,  430-431; 
survivals  in,  418,  420-421,  441- 
443;  unification  of  race  in,  45, 
421-422;  vacant,  449-450 
Isle  du  Diable,  441 
du  Salut,  441 
of  Athelney,  372 
Ely,  372 

Man,  40,  443,  453 
Orleans,  368 

Isolation,  and  political  autonomy, 
3,  133,  257;  and  protection,  133- 
134,  180,  404,  584;  and  retarda- 
tion, 144,  175,  397,  570;  and 
survivals,  370-372;  psychical  ef- 
fects of,  18-20,  582.  See  also 
Differentiation,  Islands,  and 
Mountains 
Isotherms,  100,  617-618,  622-624; 

effect  of  compressed,  617-619 
Ttaly,  Alpine  boundary  of,  4,  222, 
535,  554;  colonies  of,  114,  198; 
contrast  of  continental  and  pen- 
insular, 19,  399-405,  621;  cul- 
ture of,  99,  111;  Greek  colonies 
on  coasts  of,  265,  459;  inroads 
of  barbarians  into,  77,  83,  R5, 
522;  lakes  of,  162,  318-319,  373, 
549;  language  of,  401,  598; 
naturally  defined  location  of, 
133,  134,  180,  183;  ratio  of 
coast  to  area  in,  255-256 ;  thalas- 
sic  location  of,  283,  300-301; 
varied  relief  of,  39,  70,  422,  478, 
525,  566.  See  also  Alps,  Apen- 
nines, and  Po  Valley 
Ivory  Coast,  280 


Jaca,  550 
Jacob,  496,  505 
Jade  Bay,  324 
Jamaica,  382,  452 
James  River,  337 
Jamestown    (Va.),  369 
Janm a  River,  360 
Japan,    advanced    agriculture    in, 
446-447,  457-458,  570,  576;  area 
of,    386,    416,    420,    432;    coast 
and    maritime    development    in, 
187,  332,  342;   conservative  and 
radical  tendencies  in,   145,  413, 
414;    continental   sources   of   its 
culture,    134,   306-307,   405,   414- 
415;   density  of  population,  172, 
447,  463;   differentiation  of  race 
and    culture    in,    174,    175,    413- 
414,  419,  420;  emigration  from, 
123,    460;     ethnic    elements    in, 
45,   115,    134,  306,   422;    expan- 
sion of,  129,  176,  189,  191,  194, 
198,    271,    272,    307,    423,    428, 
432;    historical    connection    with 
Korea,    66,    80,    110,    134,    151, 
194,   271,   405,   460;    insular   lo- 
cation of,   6,   133,   141,   213-214, 
285,  306-307,  401,  428,  434,  437- 
438,    442,    445;    national    spirit 
of,  133,  182,  312,  414;  relief  of, 
446-447,  478,  557;  seclusion,  67, 
69,   191,   332 

Japan  Sea,  137,  308,  312 
Java,    208,    267,    284,    382,    465; 
agriculture     in,     369-370,     456; 
density    of    population    in,    4*7, 
452,  626;  Indian  civilization  in, 
268,  309 
Java  Sea,  307 
Jefferson,  Thomas,  42,  199 
Jerusalem,    90,    93,    99,    111,    129, 

185,  303 
Jesuit    missionaries,    98,    277;    in 

Japan,  414,  439 
Jesup   Expedition,   389 
Jews,    dispersion    of,    75,    91,    93, 
111,    124,    623;    national    spirit 
of,  183;  previous  habitat  to  Pal- 
estine,   16,    26,    266.      See    also 
Hebrews,  and  Judaism 
Jezreel,  Vale  of,  16,  545 
Jholam  River,  356;  valley  of,  359 
Johannesburg,   199 
John,  King  of  England,  372 
Jordan  River,  360;    plains  of,  58, 

496 
Juan  de  Fuca  Strait,  262 


INDEX 


659 


Judaism,     41,     511-512,     514-515, 

599-600 
Judea,  16,  58,  196,  266,  346,  505, 

545,  599-600 
Judges  of  Hebrews,  47 
Jugor  Strait,  207 
Jull  Lake,  pile  villages,  320 
Junker,   Wilhelm,    155,   216 
Jura  Mts.,  539,  562;   barrier,  214, 

537 ;      mountain     industries     in, 

579;   piedmont  roads  of,  527 
Justinian,    429 
Jutland,  260,  397,  399,  403,  447 

Kabul,  529,  538,  551,  554 

Kabul  River,   502 

Kabyles    of    Atlas    Mts.,    39,    580, 

593 

Kadesh,  city  of,  534 
Kadiak  Island,  29,  248 
Kaffirs,    135,    297-298,    580,    623; 

former     expansion    of,     7,     104, 

119;   retreat  and  decline  of,  93, 

138,   160,   176,  211 
Kafiristan,    595,    597,    599 
Kaimur   Hills,   538 
Kalahari  Desert,  35,  65,  346,  500, 

504 

Kali  River,  551 
Kalmuck    nomads,     7,     488,    509; 

agriculture  of,  500 ;    as  frontier 

police  of  Russia,  234 
Kama  River,  in  Russian  expansion, 

162,    226 

Kambing  Island,   165,  431 
Kamchatka,  235,  285,  305,  388 
Kamerun,   39,   373;    coast   of,   277 
Kamerun   Bay,    262 
Kamerun  Mts.,   280 
Kanawha   River,   canon    of,   534 
Kandahar,    536,    538 
Kandy   (Ceylon)   600 
Kanem,    Sudan    state    of,    373-374 
Kangra,   572 

Kansas,   arid   climate   of,   499 
Kansu    Province,    227,    228,    234, 

235 

Kant,   Emanuel,   10 
Kanuri  Sudanese,  362 
Karague,  495 
Karakorum    Mts.,    97,    529,    550; 

passes    of,    586-587 ;    temporary 

villages  in,  207-208 
Karakorum     Pass,     529,     550-551, 

611 

Karroo   Desert,   490 
Kashgar,  43,  359,  529 
Kashmir,  state  of,  359 ;    as  moun- 


tain transit  land,  523,  539,  589; 
carriers  in,  532;  communal  pas- 
tures in,  575;  industries  of,  578; 
passes  of,  536;  pass  routes  to, 
551-552,  587;  terrace  agricul- 
ture in,  568 

Kayaks,  of  Eskimos,  248,  299 

Kazan,  254,  479,  493,  509 

Ke  Islands,  428,  444 

Kedar,  Desert  of,  505 

Keeling   Island,   473 

Kent    (England)   286,  370,  397 

Kentrites  River,   216 

Kentucky,  89-90,  113,  217,  218, 
228;  retarded  mountain  region 
of,  45,  113,  631 

Khaibar  Pass,  528,  538,  544,  553, 
595 

Khalkhas  nomads,  234 

Khartum,  498 

Khasia  Mts.,  526,  584,  594 

Khiuseb  River  route,  346 

Khiva,  163,  491 

Khorasan,   491,   507 

Khotan,  rivers  of,  502 

Khusistan,   rugs  of,  507 

Kiakhta,   217 

Kief,  339,  348 

Kiel,  284;  Canal,  409 

Kilia,  mouth  of   Danube,  350 

Kilwa,   157,   269 

Kilwauru,  321,  424,  453 

Kimberley,  mines  of,  199,  580 

Kinik  Indians,   137,   278 

Kiowa   Indians,   329 

Kirghis,  as  typical  pastoral  no- 
mads, 57,  485,  488-489,  497,  509; 
caravan  trade  of,  505-506;  ma- 
rauders, 234,  491;  mountain  pas- 
tures of,  113,  541,  587;  of  Cen- 
tral Asia,  41,  510;  of  the 
Russian  steppes,  163,  235,  493, 
500 

Kirman,   rugs  of,   507 

Kirthar   Mts.,   525 

Kitchener,  Lord,  498 

Kittara,  nomad  state  of,  495 

Kiu-siu  Island,  13"4,  306 

Klondike  mines,  340,  531 

Kohat    Pass,   553 

Kokan,  buried  cities  of,  550 

Koko-Nor,  nomads  of,  504,  530, 
587 

Kola   Peninsula,   207,   397,  486 

Kolarian  tribes  of  India,  159,  596 

Kolima  River,   344,  486,  624 

Kong   Mts.,    325 

Konigsberg,    245,    246 


660 


INDEX 


Koran,    510 

Kordofan,  65,  358 

Korea,  Buddhism  in,  600;  Chinese 

boundary  of,  217,  236,  400,  403; 

civilization    of,    134,    137,    415; 

density   of    population   in,   447 ; 

peninsula   location   of,   133,   141, 

213,     399-401,     405.     See     also 

Japan 

Korean    Strait,   428 
Korkus,  62,  396 
Koryaks,  388-389 
Kot   tribe,   388 
Kottbus,  482 
Koweit,   505,   507 
Kronstadt    Bay,    246 
Kuan  Hsien,  530 
Kuban  River,  235,  237 
Kublai  Khan,  428,  437 
Kuen  Luen  Mts.,  62,  501,  503 
Kugiar   Province,   550 
Kulm,   529 

Kumaon  Province,   551,   572,   584 
Kunawar  Province,  584 
Kunduz,   529 
Kunene  River,   278 
Kurdistan,    highland    location    of, 

216,  562,  595 
Kurds,  marauders,  216,  562,  587; 

pastoral  migrations  of,  403,  562, 

587 

Kurgans,  481 
Kurile   Isles,   305,   388,   418,   442, 

446 

Kuro  Siwa,  134,  388,  613 
Kursachsen,  60 
Kuskokwin  River,  248 
Kutsha,  359 
Kwang-chan  Bay,  165 
Kwangtung  Province,  388,  621 

Labrador,  397,  406,  618 

La  Chine,  337 

Lacinian  Cape,  314 

Laconia,    110 

Eadak,  typical  mountain  environ- 
ment in,  37-38,  568,  572,  583- 
586 

Ladino,  language,   222 

Lady  Franklin  Bay,  207 

Lagoons,  coastal,  259-260 

Lagos,  in  Nigeria,  276;  in  Spain. 
13 

Laibach  Valley,  553 

Lake  Baikal,  344 
Balkash,    110 
Borgne,  353 


Chad,    296,    362,    368,    373, 

374,  381,  462,  492,  506 
Chalco,  374 
Champlain,    354 
Como,  550 
Constance,  373,  534 
Erie,  375 
Garda,  373 

Geneva,  221,  373,  534,  554 
Huron,  368 
Ij,   324 
Issik   Kul,  57 
Ladoga,   353,   375,  441 
Lucerne,   374,   537,  549,   593 
Lugano,    373 
Maggiore,  162,  373,  537,  549, 

593 

Maracaibo,  338,  374 
Michigan,   89,   348,   374,   375 
Mohrya,   320 
Ngami,  298,  346 
Nicaragua,  78 
Nyassa,  320,  375,  386 
of  the  Woods,  98 
Onega,   353 
Ontario,  130,  375,  540 
Pontchartrain,  353 
Prasias,  319 
Salvador,   353 
Superior,  5,  44,  47,  98,  343, 

344,  348 

Tanganyika,  386,  570 
Tezcoco,  374 
Thun,  373 

Titicaca,  296,  373-374 
Winnebago,    354 
Winnipeg,   344,   349 
Zurich,  373 

Lakes,    as    fresh-water    seas,    375; 
politico-economic   importance  of, 
373-375,   549;    relation   of  rivers 
to,    336;    salt,    374-375 
Lama,  Grand,  112,  514 
Lamaseries,  of  Central   Asia,  228, 

568,   572,   582-584,   586 
Lampeclusn  Island,  440,  457 
Lamu,    a57,   252 
Lancashire,   453,   564 
Lancerote  Island,  419,  462 
Land-masses,  see  Continents 
Languages,     and     area,      174-175, 
180-181,    190-191;    and    geogra- 
phic   conditions,    41,    403,    404, 
423,    442;    boundaries    of,    222, 
360-361,  401,  526,  539,  543;  iso- 
lation and  differentiation  of  into 
dialects,   22,   48,   117,    122,    175, 
401,  419-421,  479,  510,  595-599; 


INDEX 


isolation    and    survival    of,    164, 

,370-371,    404,    420-421;     mixed 

on  coasts  and  thalassic  isles,  84, 

276-277.    427-428 
Langue  d'oil,  418-419 
Lapland,  63,  141,  485,  557 
La    Plata    River,    100,    154,    262, 

338,   342,   351,   625 
La  Pointe,  98 
Lapps,   35-36,    172,   624;    reindeer 

tribes,   152,  215,  218,  486,  560 
La    Salle,     explorations    of,    337, 

349 

Latham,  Robert,  388 
Latin  America,  84,  114,  120,  135 
Laurentian   Highlands,  336,  522 
Layard,  A.  H.,  295 
League  of  the  Rhine  Cities,  342 
Lea   River   swamps,   370 
Lebanon     Mts.,     forests     of,     277, 

477 ;      longitudinal      valley      of, 

534-535 ;      Phoenician     seaboard 

of,   130,  254 
Lechaeum,  250 
Lech  River,  361 
Leh,  208,  272,  550-552 
Leipzig,    544 
Lemnos   Island,    249 
Lena  River,  climate  of,  486,  624; 

highway   of    Russian    expansion, 

44,   344;    in   the   fur   trade,    10, 

344,    505 

Lenni-Lenapi  Indian  trail,  5 
Lernian  marshes,   327 
Leroy-Beaulieu,  A.,  479,  630 
Lesbos  Island,  454 
Letto-Lithuanians,    224,   371,    479. 

See  also  Lithuania 
Leuk,  566,  578 
Leukas  Island,  410 
Levant,  trade  of,  3,  111,  276,  303 
Lewis    and    Clark    Expedition,   98, 

357 
Lhassa,    100,    112,    208,    227,    228, 

514,  543,  551-552 
Liberia,  state  of,  111,  280,  386 
Libya,   252,  415,   454;    Desert  of, 

163,   504 

Liechtenstein,   233 
Liguria.  91,   257,   283;    Apennines 

of,  527 

Limosa  Island,  451 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  441 
Lincoln    (England),  245,  370,  372 
Lincolnshire,    108,    324 
Lindisfarne  Island,  436 
T.iwin    frvnca.    276-277 
Linth  River,  373;   valley  of,  359 


Lipans,    154 

Lipari  Islands,  440,  446,  451,  457 

Li  Ping,  327 

Lipu  Lekh  Pass,  551 

Liro  Valley,  550 

Lisbon,  97,   149,   153 

Literature,  and  geography,  181, 
599 

Lithuania,  122,  272;  survival  of 
race  and  speech  in,  124,  421, 
478 

Little  Russia,  138,  224,  479 

Litus  Saxonicum,  273,  279 

Liverpool,   149,   283 

Livingstone,  David,  36,  38,  320, 
346,  362,  368 

Llamas,   63-64,   108,  575 

Llanos,  483,  485 

Loanda,    153,  278 

Lob  Nor  basin,  497,  503 

Location,  and  area,  129-130;  cen- 
tral, 17,  138-141,  143,  145,  148, 
150,  163,  254-255,  348-486;  con- 
tinental, 130-131,  144,  149;  con- 
trasted or  complementary,  137, 
143-146,  150-151,  160-161,  505, 
547-548,  551-552,  557-558,  588, 
616;  evolution  in,  148-150,  164, 
282-283;  importance  of,  129-131, 
150,  381-382,  426,  432;  inter- 
continental, 28,  131-132,  151, 
283,  305,  308-310,  405-406; 
isthmian,  131,  151-152,  283; 
maritime,  15,  141-142,  246-253, 
257-262;  naturally  defined,  12- 
13,  45,  67,  115,  117,  123,  130, 
133-134,  163,  169,  172,  257,  268- 
269,  358-360,  393,  402-404,  447, 
593,  595;  naturally  defined  and 
early  development,  134,  182-183, 
185,  191,  197,  213-214,  307,  394, 
396,  405,  421,  444,  476,  635;  pe- 
ripheral, 138-139,  141,  143-146, 
150,  163-164;  relation  between 
peripheral  and  central,  141-146, 
150,  162,  255-257,  263,  271-273, 
281,  307,  433;  scattered,  80,  124, 
138,  139,  152-160,  163-164; 
scattered  location  in  growth, 
154,  155-158,  210-211;  scattered 
location  of  decline,  158-160,  164- 
165,  391,  430,  598-599;  strate- 
gic, 130.  152,  350-352,  445,  523, 
554;  thalassic,  136-137,  303-306, 
384-385,  388-389,  393,  399;  vi- 
cinal, 3,  14,  116-117,  131-138, 
146-152,  161,  221-229,  380-38?, 


662 


INDEX 


397,  586;  zonal,  173,  284,  308, 
394,  397,  611-613,  615,  616 

Lofoden   Islands,   450 

Loire  River,  35.  246,  338,  353-354, 
533;  plains  of,  482 

Lolos  tribes,  599 

Lombards,  in  Italy,  74,  83,  85,  87, 
108,  439 

Lombardy,  39,   161,  326 

Lombok,  208,  268;  advanced  agri- 
culture in,  456,  570;  density  of 
population  in,  452 

Lombok   Strait,  473 

London,  175,  245,  246,  264,  347, 
381 

Long  Island,  381,  443 

Lorraine,  189.  229,  230 

Los   Angeles,    346 

Lot,  47,  58,  488,  493,  496 

Louis   XIV,   198 

Louisiana,  44,  229,  238,  371;  In- 
dians of,  102,  155;  Purchase, 
42,  66,  198,  211,  349-350 

Louisville    (Ky.),  349-350,  370 

Lowlands,  density  of  population 
in,  65,  112,  476-477.  548;  dis- 
tribution of  in  the  several  con- 
tinents, 474-476 ;  historical  de- 
velopment of,  477-480;  historic- 
al movement  in,  475-476,  478- 
479,  521 ;  influence  of  soils  and 
slight  reliefs  in,  112,  480-481; 
mountaineer  conquests  in,  475- 
476,  586,  588,  599;  political  ex- 
pansion in,  482 

Lualaba  River,  320;  islands  of, 
368 

Liibeck,  13,  252,  283,  284,  304, 
339 

Lucerne,  canton  of,  374,  527;  city 
of,  528 

Lucullus,  90 

Lukmanier  Pass,  549 

Luni  River,  6 

Luristan,  595 

Luxemburg,  233 

Luzon,  mountain  Tgorotes  of,  532, 
570;  distribution  of  primitive 
Negritos  in,  146,  158,  274,  280; 
wild  tribes  in,  145-146 

Lynn,    372 

Lynn  Canal,  278 

Lyon,  373,  536,  553 

Macao,  367,   431 
Macassar  Strait.  208.  473 
Macdonnell   "Range,   526-527 
Macedonia,  92,  142,  180,  402,  535 


Mackenzie  River,  116 

Madagascar,  area  and  location, 
381,  418,  423-424,  438,  451; 
ethnic  and  political  relation  to 
Africa,  383,  423-424,  432-433; 
fauna  of,  423,  441;  Hova  Ma- 
lays of,  384,  588-589;  mixed 
population  of  coasts,  164,  424, 
432 

Madeira  Isles,   153,  422,  432,  448 

Madeira  River,   531 

Madisha,  269 

Madrid,  580 

Madura  Island,  456 

Mafia   Island,   252 

Magdalena  River,   259,  338 

Magdeburg,  342 

Magellan,  272;   Straits  of,  427 

Magna   Graecia,   96 

Magyars,  41,  138,  525.  See  also 
Hungarians 

Mahadeo  Hills,  62,  538 

Mahdi  uprising,  498 

Mahe    (India),    165 

Mahe  Island,  451,  453 

Makoko  River,   346 

Makololo  tribe,   106,  362,  368 

Main  River,  351 

Maine,  state  of.  222,  253,  261 

Mainland   Island,  450 

Maize,  cultivation  of,  64,  87,  500, 
501,  571 

Majorca  Island,  428,  460 

Malabar  Coast,  30,  257,  284 

Malacca.  193,  284,  298,  312; 
Chinese  in,  30,  267,  307; 
Negrito  remnants  in,  159,  391; 
peninsula  of,  287,  398,  400,  405 

Malaga,  567 

Malay  Archipelago,  30,  193,  446, 
470 ;  density  of  population  in, 
451-452,  456;  Negritos  in,  159, 
391 

Malays,  coast  villages  of,  266,  272, 
320,  321  ;  distribution  of.  39, 
103.  107,  134,  144.  382,  385-386, 
422,  423,  459;  nautical  efficiency 
of,  41,  193,  321,  390,  424-425 

Malindi,   157 

Maloja   Pass,   550 

Malta,  density  of  population  in, 
43,  451,  453,  457;  emigration 
from,  123,  460;  importance  to 
England.  154,  431;  location  of, 
413,  427-429 

Malthus.  on  checks  to  population, 
61.  461,  464,  579 

Manchester   Ship   Canal,   247 


INDEX 


663 


Manchuria,  415,  475,  611;  Chinese 
expansion  into,  189,  581;  Rus- 
sian  expansion  into,  143,  188, 
211,  213,  229,  271 

Manchus,    184,    306,    423,    495-496 

Mandan   Indian  villages,  98,  357 

Manganja  tribe,  320 

Mangyan  tribe,  272 

Manhattan  Island,  369 

Manila   Bay,   281 

Manitoba,  615 

Mantze  tribes,  234,  573 

Maoris,  103,  177-178,  438 

Marches,   see   Boundaries 

Marcomanni  War,  85,  86 

Marco   Polo,  269,   541 

Mare  clausum.  314-315 

Marianne  Islands,  448,  464 

Maritime  development,  see  Coasts 
and  Navigation;  periods  of  his- 
tory, 311-312.  See  also  Aegean, 
Atlantic  and  Mediterranean 
periods 

Marius,  Caius,  540 

Markets,  border,  207-208,  227, 
364;  coast,  267,  305,  505; 
desert,  505-507 ;  island,  108,  285, 
305,  321,  413,  424-426,  505; 
mountain,  100,  551-553;  pied- 
mont, 527-531 

Marne  River,  338,  361,  367 

Maros  Kiver,  526 

Marquesas    Islands,    462,    464-465 

Marquette,  Jacques,  98,  349 

Marra  Mte.,  526 

Marseilles,  276,  303,  547,  581 

Marshall  Islands,  299,  448 

Martigny,   360,   536 

Martinique,  452 

Maninga  negroes,  570 

Maryland,  tidewater  country  of, 
16,  61,  261;  wheat  of,  47,  284 

Masai  tribes,  559 

Mascat,  145,  268,  269,  276 

Mason,  Otis,  78,  389 

Massachusetts,    11 

Massilia,  274,  312,  523,  532 

Massowa,  305,   611 

Matto  Grosso,  38 

Mauritius  Island,  473,  627;  densi- 
ty of  population  in,  451,  453; 
oceanic  market,  108,  269,  413, 
426,  453 

Mayas,   civilization  of,  157,  395 

Mayotte   Island,  451 

Mbau,   44'4 

Mbengga,  444 

Meath,  361 


Meaux,  338 

Mecca,  99,  111,  129,  153,  185,  492, 
510,  512 

Mecklenburg,  479 

Medes,  492,  588 

Media,  91 

Mediterranean  race,  97,  132,  222, 
503-304,  306,  385,  391,  401,  404, 
416,  422,  522,  543,  620,  621, 
628 ;  in  England,  75 ;  relation 
of  Teutonic  race  to,  121 

Mediterranean  Sea,  as  an  enclosed 
basin,  191-192,  254,  282-283, 
284,  300-301,  310-311;  climate 
of,  109,  136,  557;  contrasted 
eastern  and  western  basins  of, 
13,  96,  145,  152,  249,  266,  284, 
429;  early  civilization  of,  84, 
122,  130,  131,  136,  262,  280, 
281,  303-304,  306,  515,  634; 
European  front  of,  148-250,  258, 
339,  532;  intercontinental  loca- 
tion of,  308,  385;  islands  of, 
427,  450-451,  457;  maritime  de- 
velopment in,  107,  131,  187,  252, 
284,  300-301;  period  of  history, 
82,  311;  political  union  of,  under 
Eomans,  136,  191,  192,  194,  311- 
312;  trade  with  the  North  Sea, 
82,  540;  trade  with  the  Orient, 
16,  18,  28,  131,  270,  276,  283, 
425 

Megara,  250,  429 

Mekong   Eiver,   259 

Melanesia,  agriculture  in,  56,  455.- 
456;  area  and  fauna  of,  445-446, 
465;  artificial  checks  to  popula- 
tion in,  463,  465;  negroid  race 
of,  38,  100,  124,  165,  272,  391, 
434;  Polynesian  and  Malay  im- 
migrants in,  77,  272,  460 

Melville    Sound,   312 

Menam   River,  259,   322-323 

Menapii,   Rhine  villages  of,  357 

Mera  Valley,  550 

Mercenaries,  581 

Meroe,  506 

Mersey  River,   149 

Merv,  163,  345,  357,  491,  507,  538 

Mesas,  pueblos  in,  329 

Mesen  River,  348 

Meshed,    507,    528 

Mesopotamia,  civilization  and  it 
rigation  in,  329,  352;  desert 
border  of,  400,  506;  mountain 
border  of,  402-403,  475,  476,  586, 
588;  nomads  in,  47,  109;  river 


664 


INDEX 


navigation  in,  295,  296,  349; 
steppes  of,  26,  266 

Messenia,  430 

Meuse  River,  353 

Mexico,  altitude  zones  of,  558, 
560;  area  of,  182,  430;  bound- 
ary zone  of,  220,  221,  237,  489; 
elimates  of,  617,  619,  627;  lakes 
of,  374;  location  of,  130,  353, 
430;  mountain  carriers  of,  531; 
native  civilization  of,  78,  102, 
329,  390,  392,  395,  635;  Span- 
ish i*,  66,  84,  98,  111,  120,  176, 
178 

Mexico  City,  231 

Miami    Indians,    89 

Miami    River,    364 

Michilimackinac  Island,  368 

Micronesia,  56,  446,  456,  460,  465 

Midianites,   506,   545 

Migrations,  75-77,  84-88,  297-300. 
See  also  Historical  Movement 

Middlesex   (England)  370 

Milan,  99,  528 

Mindanao,  39,  272,   278,  281,  444 

Mindoro,   145-146,  272 

Minemerg,  575 

Minjak  Province,  Tibet,  227 

Minnesota,  65,   632 

Minorca  Island,  420 

Min  River  Valley,  530 

Miocene   land   bridge,   473 

Miquelon  Island,  430,  450 

Miris  tribe,   584 

Missionaries,  as  agents  of  expan- 
sion, 75,  98-99,  187,  628 

Mississippi  River,  as  a  boundary, 
3,  66,  142,  155,  162,  190,  363; 
commerce  of,  198,  199,  201,  344, 
350;  flood-plain  of,  11,  326,  364; 
highway  of  expansion,  44,  98, 
134,  212,  338,  343-344,  348-349; 
importance  of  mouth  of,  111, 

198,  259,  349-350,  353;   Indians 
of,  155,  177,  364;  valley  of,  176, 

199,  286,   482,  544,  568-569 
Mississippi,  state  of,  102,  155 
Missouri   River,  44,   162,  297,  355, 

357,  477,  522;  in  the  fur  trade, 
98,  155,  211,  530 

Mobile  River,  218 

Mocha,    145 

Mohammed,  506,  509,  510 

Mohammedanism,  desert  stamp  of, 
512-515;  geographical  distribu- 
tion of,  84,  99,  112,  153,  185, 
193,  281,  305,  406,  504,  510-513, 


526,  585;  stimulus  to  expansion, 
268-269,  272,  512-514 

Mohave  Desert,  346 

Mohawk  depression,  as  mountain 
pass,  5,  44,  130,  209,  342,  474, 
533,  544,  548-549;  Erie  Canal 
through,  5,  540-541 ;  strategic 
location  in  war,  540,  554 

Mohawk  River,  375,  549,  618 

Mohegan  Island,  253 

Moldavia,   351 

Mollendo,  531 

Molokans,  of  Russia,  235 

Moluccas,  208,  268,  285,  444,  446, 
452 

Mombasa,   157,  252,  263 

Mongolia,  arid  pastures  of,  63,  483, 
548;  border  regions  of,  217, 
234-236 ;  Chinese  expansion  in- 
to, 189,  226-227;  nomad  expan- 
sion from,  109,  110 

Mongolian  race,  area  and  distri- 
bution of,  103,  174,  225-226, 
388-389,  391;  Arctic  branches 
of,  36,  135,  173,  210,  385;  ele- 
ments in  Himalayan  India,  102, 
402,  526,  585;  in  Farther  India, 
534;  in  Japan,  110,  405,  422, 
437 

Mongols,  central  location  of,  109- 
110,  136;  empire  in  India,  6, 
46,  180,  402,  496;  nomadism  of, 
226-227,  234-235,  497,  503.  See 
also  Tartars 

Monotheism,  in  deserts  and  steppes, 
1-2,  27,  511-512,  515 

Monroe  Doctrine,  52,  199-200 

Mons  Matrona,  536 

Monsoons,  and  rainfall,  270,  489- 
490,  567,  615;  and  sailing 
routes  in  the  North  Indian 
Ocean,  30,  309 

Mont  Blanc  Range,  220,  542,  546, 
550 

Mont  Cenis,  548 

Monte  Rosa  Alps,  543,  557 

Axontenegro,    143,   233 

Montesquieu,   18,  68,  608 

Montevideo,   347 

Montfort,  Simon  de,  372 

Mont  Genevre  Pass,  536 

Montreal,  343,  360,  364;  as  fur 
market,  5,  375 ;  head  of  sea 
navigation  at,  247,  337,  347; 
island  site  of,  369 

Mont   Reale   cloister,   509 

Moors,  in  Spain,  25,  79,  110,  496, 


INDEX 


665 


537;  in  the  Canary  Islands,  88; 

Saharan  traders,  506 
Moqui   Indians,   78,   95.     See   also 

Pueblo   Indiana 
Mora  River,  530 
Moravia,  86,  136,  224 
Morgan,  Lewis,  54 
Morocco,   97,   250,   295,   386,   506; 

and    Spain,    132,    537 
Moros,   coast  location  of,  39,   278- 

279,    318;     migrations    of,    88, 

272 
Moscow,   162,   185,   194,   339,  348; 

Government,    632 

Moselle  River,  351;  valley  of,  565 
Moses,  509,  511 
Mound-builders,     distribution     of, 

108,  364;  sites  of,  326,  369 
Mount   Athos,   249 
Everest,  557 
Furca,  373 

Kilimanjaro,    559,    607 
Ocra  Pass,  553 

Mountains,  agriculture  in,  see  Ter- 
race agriculture;  as  barriers,  43- 

44,  97,    231-232,    269,    400-402, 
521,    523-524,    532-533,    535-538, 
541,  544,  546-548,  561,   614;   as 
boundaries,    215,   220,   224,    357- 
360,  642,  593 ;  as  transit  regions, 
522-523,  530,  531,  541,  549-550, 
554,   589,  597;   carriers  in,  531- 
532;     checks    to    population    in, 
582-586;  climatic  effects  of,  542- 
544.  561,  563,  567,  588-589,  614; 
climatic    islands,    501-502,    526- 
527,  541,  557-558 ;  climatic  zones 
of    altitude,    279,    524,    557-560; 
conquest    of,    91,    522-523,    588- 
590,  593,  598 ;   contrasted  slopes 
of,  542-543 ;  diversity  of  peoples 
and    dialects   in,    595-598 ;    econ- 
omy  of   level   land   in,   571-573; 
feuds     in,     237,     591-593,     599; 
folded  systems  of,  536-538;  hay- 
making   m,    576-578 ;    herdsmen 
and  shepherds  in  high,  207,  558- 
560,   574-577;   inaccessibility  of, 

45,  521-522,  589,  596,  598;   iso- 
lation   and    protection    of,    111, 
234,  537,  562-563,   572-573,  587, 
589-590,      592-593,      595,      600; 
isolation  and  retardation  in,  113, 
530,  591,  599-600;   isolation  and 
survivals  in,  45,  94-95,  159,  442, 
595,  597-600 ;  marauding  peoples 
of,    235,   553-554,   586-591,   599; 
mental    and    moral    qualities    of 


people  of,  19-20,  23,  161,  590, 
592,  593,  599-600;  overpopula- 
tion and  emigration  from,  579- 
582,  585-586 ;  passes  of,  see 
Passes;  pastures  and  stock- 
raising  in,  207,  541,  558-560, 
573-576;  places  of  asylum,  74, 
94,  113,  160-161,  272-273,  437, 
543 ;  political  dismemberment 
in,  17,  523,  589-591,  593-595, 
597,  599;  routes  across,  527- 
529,  535-541 ;  sparsity  of  popu- 
lation in,  152,  270,  521-522,  526- 
527,  558-560,  563-565;  states  of, 
133,  141,  143,  233,  523,  536, 
554,  588,  590-595,  59S ;  trans- 
montane  trade  of,  528-531,  547- 
548,  551-554;  valleys  of,  see 
Valleys;  waterpower  in,  70,  527, 
579;  winter  industries  in,  578- 
579.  See  also  Piedmonts 

Mozambique,  84,  157,  309;  Chan- 
nel, 423 

Miihlhausen,  540 

Mungo   River,   277 

Munich,  528,   542 

Murchison  Range,  527,  570 

Murghab   River,    162,   345,   357 

Murman  Coast,  207.  See  also 
Pomors 

Murmese  tribes,   584 

Murray  Bay,  92 

Murray    River,    382 

Murzuk  oasis,  152,  502 

Muscovite,  see  Russian 

Muskingum  River  valley,  89 

Mycenae,  250,  415 

Myrmidons,   457 

Mytilene,  252 

Nagaris,   568,    594 

Nahuatl  Indians,  157 

Nair  tribe,  584 

Namaqua  tribes,  87,  116 

Nanking,  347 

Nan  Shan  Mts.,  227 

Nantes,  246;   Edict  of,  237,  439 

Nao-chan   Island,    165 

Napoleon  I,  5,  151,  194,  351,  401, 

440-441,  540,  544,  546 
Napoleon  III,  542 
Narbonne,  528,   547 
Narrow  Seas,  314-315 
Narva  River,   348 
Nasomones,  nomads,  506 
Natal,   20,   268,   623,   626 
Natchez  District,  238 
National  dress,  479,  600 


666 


INDEX 


Nature-made  highways,  persistent 
effect  of,  5-6,  539-541,  545-552. 
See  also  Rivers 

Nauplia,  250 

Navajo  Indians,  116,  154,  330, 
508 

Navarre,  523 

Navarrete,  545 

Navigation,  anthropo-geographic- 
al  importance  of,  293-295.  311, 
332-333,  412,  422-424;  methods 
of  primitive,  87-88,  249-250; 
primitive  boats  of,  295-298;  re- 
gions of  early  development  in, 
298-300;  thalassic,  301-303,  305, 
307,  313,  445;  three  geographic 
stages  of,  284-285,  301-302,  313 

Navy   67,   262,   331-332,   438 

Naxoa   Island,   429,   446 

Neapolitan,  plain,  dense  popula- 
tion of,  477 ;  temperament,  621- 
622 

Negritos,  scattered  distribution  in 
regions  of  survival,  146,  158- 
159,  165,  272,  274,  420,  442 

Negro  race,  area  in  Africa,  105, 
173,  358 ;  in  South  America  and 
the  Antilles,  91,  106,  273;  in  the 
United  States,  37,  114,  161,  481, 
619-620,  625-626;  skin  of,  38- 
39 

Negroid  races,  area  and  location 
of,  100,  391.  See  also  Melane- 
sia 

Nejd  Plateau,  501,  505,  507,  510, 
514,  567 

Neolithic    Age,    415-416 

Nepal,  ethnic  elements  in,  102, 
595-596 ;  political  independence 
of,  133,  233 ;  Rajput  expansion 
into,  543,  588;  typical  mountain 
environment  in,  143,  532,  568, 
575,  581 

Netherlands,  see  Holland 

Netze  River,  370 

Neufahrwasser,   246 

Neutrality  of  the  seas,  314-315 

Nevada   Desert,   63,  346 

Neva  River,  342,  348,  353 

New  Amsterdam,  5 

New  Britain,  456 

New  Brunswick,  238 

New  Caledonia,  446 

New  England,  abolition  in,  23-24; 
French  Canadians  in,  221 ;  mari- 
time development  of,  15,  49, 
261-262,  268,  331-332;  maritime 
trade,  23,  264,  284,  618:  rivers 


of,  342,  354;  type  of  character, 

26,    198,   619 
Newfoundland,  95,  261,  275,  400; 

fisheries  of,   163,   187,  289,   2£4, 

331,  450 
New    Guinea,    65,    165,    200,    441, 

465;    chase   in,   445,   456;    large 

area  of,  381,  383,  409,  443,  452; 

pile  villages  of,  321;    trade  of, 

276,  425 
New   Hebrides    Islands,    330,    456, 

460,  463-464 
New  Ireland,  446 
New  Jersey,  260 
Newmarket,  370 
New  Mexico,  Indians  of,  102,  116; 

Pueblo  civilization  of,  329,  508 
New  Orleans,  location   of,   3,   111, 

347,  349,  350,  353,  369 
Newport,  Christopher,  337 
New  York  Bay,  284,  354 
New  York  City,  276,  613;  location 

of,   347,   540,   548 
New   York   State,  and  Lake  Erie, 

375;    and    the    Mohawk    depres- 
sion,   5,    209,   540,   618;    French 

Canadians  in,  221 ;   Iroquois  of, 

93,   209 
New   Zealand,    area   of,    172,    177, 

201;  English  colonists  in,  20-22, 

106,    177;    fauna   of,    178,   441; 

insular   history   of,    6,    45,    433; 

Maoris    of,    103,    177-178,    438, 

464,  465 

Nicaragua,  157,  546 
Nicobar   Islands,   159,   441 
Piemen   River,   191.   209,   272,   353 
Niger  River,  97,  276-277,  352,  367 ; 

flood-plain  of,  325-326,  345,  491- 

492,  498 ;   nomads  in   the  valley 

of,  7,  109,  511,  586 
Nigeria,  352,  373,  570 
Nikolaievsk,  350 
Nile  River,  as  a  highway.  140,  340, 

345;    craft    of,    295-297;     delta 

coast  of,  260,  267,  297,  347,  372; 

flood-plain  of,  23,  325,  328,  476; 

unity    of    valley    of,    358,    397; 

valley  conquered  by  nomads,  7, 

109,   151,   489 
Nilgiri  Hills,  583-585,  616 
Nineveh,  295,  588 
Nisida  Island,  440 
Nizhni  Novgorod,  619 
Nogai    Tartars,   500 
Nomads,  arid  plains  the  homes  of 

pastoral,    7,   4S,   53.   63-64.   116, 

137,  234,  483-486,  500,  509-510, 


INDEX 


667 


559,  615-616;  arrested  develop- 
ment of,  7,  63,  489,  507,  509-511, 
515,  615;  as  disseminators  of 
civilization,  193,  510;  conquests 
of,  118,  137-138,  185,  198;  con- 
quest of  neighboring  agricul- 
tural lowlands,  7,  89,  109-110, 
137,  142,  486-487,  490-492,  494- 

496,  509 ;     decentralization     of 
small   pastoral    groups,   58,   496- 

497,  510;    flocks   and   herds   of, 

26,  63,   485;    forms   of   defense 
against,    234-235,    492-493;    geo- 
graphic     distribution      of,      see 
Deserts   and   Steppes;    historical 
importance  of  pastoral,  486-487; 
industries     of,      507-509;      land 
bond    among,    57-58,    60-61,    65, 
80-81;     limited    agriculture    of, 
57,  62,  107,  500-502;  marauders, 
57,  234-235,  362,  485,  487,  490- 
492,     495,     506,     510;     market 
towns  of,   137,   505-507;    mental 
and  moral  qualities  of,  1-2,  510; 
military  organization  of,  58,  89, 
493-494,   497;    mobility  of,  487- 
488,    496-497;    physical    charac- 
teristics   of,    46,    504;    political 
consolidation     of     territory     by, 
104,   198,  486-487,  492,  494-496, 
500,    512-514;    religion    of,    1-2, 

27,  498,   506,   511-514,   599-600; 
resistance  to   conquest  by,   498- 
499;   restriction  of  area  of,  64, 
499-500;    scant   diet   of,   46,   61, 
490,    503-504;    seasonal    migra- 
tion of,   77,   85,   489,   494,   541;' 
trade  of,  97,  104,  504-505 ;  water 
supply  of  57,  489,  490,  493,  497- 
499,   501-503,   526 

No  Man 's  Land,  209,  217-218 

Nordenskiold,  207 

Nordland   Province,   330 

Norfolk,  England,  370;  Virginia, 
246 

Norfolk  Isle,  439-440 

Noricum,   85 

Norse,  in  Britain,  83,  89,  134,  176, 
184,  187,  304,  422;  in  Prance, 
46,  187,  338,  404;  in  Greenland, 
88,  129,  249,  300-302,  386-387, 
422,  436,  633-634;  in  Iceland, 
88;  in  Sicily,  427-428 

North  Africa,  and  Spain,  28,  86- 
87,  110,  132,  151,  405,  496;  and 
Sicily,  409;  early  historical 
activity  of,  187,  272,  309,  330; 
ethnic  elements  in,  39,  97,  104, 


105,  121-122,  132,  192,  418; 
French  in,  499;  Vandals  in,  83, 
86,  87.  See  also  Spain 

North  America,  animals  and 
plants  of,  64,  434,  485;  area  of, 
169,  179,  310;  coast  distribu- 
tion of  early  colonies  in,  146, 
210,  245-246,  273 ;  coastline,  302- 
303,  400;  contrast  of  Atlantic 
and  Pacific  slopes  in  native 
civilization,  329-330,  388-390 ; 
394-396;  Cordilleras  as  barriers 
in,  394,  396;  Pacific  coast  of, 
262-263,  277,  280,  285,  614, 
rivers  of,  214,  337-338,  343,  354 ; 
structure  of,  343,  394-395 ;  Tem- 
perate Zone  of,  614,  616;  vicin- 
al location  about  Bering  Sea, 
381,  384-385,  388-389 

North  Atlantic  Ocean,  302,  311 

North  Atlantic  States,  of  the  U. 
S.,  275 

North  Cape,  618 

North  Carolina,  45,  236,  371;  In- 
dians of,  93,  116,  154,  155  , 

North  German  lowland,  4,  324, 
370,  478-480,  482,  558 

North  Sea,  259-260,  311,  421-422, 
473;  as  an  enclosed  sea,  130, 
134,  137,  273,  282,  302,  304, 
311;  fisheries  of,  331-332;  rivers 
of,  108,  340;  trading  towns  of, 
150,  244-245,  250 

Northwest  Coast  tribes  of  America, 
see  British  Columbia  and  Alas- 
ka 

Northwest  Passage,  337 

Northwest   Territory,  179 

Norway,  agriculture  in,  574,  576- 
577,  631;  and  Swedish  bound- 
ary, 215,  218-219;  coasts  and 
maritime  development  in,  71, 
141,  149,  254,  255,  257,  261-262, 
264,  268,  302,  320,  340,  375 ;  dis- 
tribution of  population  in,  270, 
330,  560,  564 ;  emigration  and 
medieval  colonization  from,  67, 
123,  275,  582;  fisheries  in,  330; 
mountain  life  in,  560,  574-576, 
579,  600.  See  also  Norse 

Nova  Scotia,  74,  400,  455 

Novgorod,  43,  136,  304,  342,  348 

Nubian  Desert,  215,  358,  489,  498, 
506,  509 

Nukufelau,  463 

Numidian  nomads,  492 

Nuremberg,  544 


668 


INDEX 


Oases,  43,  152-153,  163,  500-502 

Oberalp  Pass,  534-535 

Obi  Kiver,  512,  625 

Ocean  Currents,  249,  389,  613.  See 
also  Gulf  Stream,  Kuro  Siwa, 
and  Equatorial  Current 

Oceanica,  289-290,  299,  45d,  462- 
464 

Oceanic  period  in  history,  282-283, 
284-285.  See  Atlantic 

Oceans  and  Seas,  as  barriers,  21, 
242,  244,  293,  298,  332-333;  as 
factor  in  man's  unity,  292294, 
300;  historical  evolution  of,  13- 
14,  260,  282-285,  311;  neutrality 
of,  314-315;  relation  of  to  uni- 
versal history,  82,  293-295,  311; 
size  of,  312-315;  size  of  drain- 
age basins,  338-340.  See  also 
Sea  basins 

Octodurus,  536 

Oder  River,  191,  208,  260 

Odessa,  347 

Oesel  Island,  429 

Ohio,  Indians  of,  55,  89,  257 

Ohio  River,  highway  of  colonial 
expansion,  44,  162,  343-344,  349- 
350;  traffic  on,  201,  349-350 

Oikoumene,  171 

Oise  River,  367 

Oka  River,  348 

Okhotsk  Sea,  305,  308,  410 

Oloron,  547 

Oman,  location  of,  269 ;  maritime 
development  of,  193,  270,  309; 
maritime  trade  of,  164,  268,  284 ; 
terrace  agriculture  in,  567 

Omsk,  634 

Onas  Indians,  178 

Onega  River,  348 

Ontario  Province,  238 

Orange  Free  State,  140,  184 

Orange  River,  116,  346 

Ordos  Country,  227.  499 

Oregon,  movement  to,  4-5,  60,  98, 
219,  530;  Indian  tribes  of,  102, 
281,  395 

Oregon  Trail.  199 

Orient,  Cape  Horn  route  to,  427 ; 
Mediterranean  and  Red  Sea 
route  to,  131-132,  270,  308-310, 
400;  trade  of  Europe  with,  82, 
131,  149,  258,  276,  301,  309,  343, 
348 

Oriental  rugs,  507-508 

Origins,  geographical,  121-125 

Orinoco  River,  Arawaks  and  Ca- 
ribs  on,  256,  338;  navigable 


highway,    337,    341,    352;     pile 

villages  on,  320 
Orkney   Islands,   264,  449 
Orleans,  in  France,  338,  354 
Orochones,    of    Siberia,    78,    418, 

486,  488 

Orontes  Valley,  534-535 
Ossetes  tribe,  539,  554 
Ostia,  13,  283 
Ostrogoths,  85,  97 
Ostyaks,  388,  625 
Oxford,   372,  413 
Oxus    River,    346,    374,    512,    529, 

538;  valley  of,  541 
Ozark  Plateau,  477,  522 

Pacific  Coast  States  (of  U.  S.),  4- 
5,  232,  276,  346;  fragmentary 
Indian  stocks  in,  154,  177 

Pacific  Ocean,  ethnic  and  cultunl 
affinities  of  in  North  America, 
388-390,  395-396 ;  geographic 
condition  for  intercourse  be- 
tween Asia  and  North  America, 
387-389 ;  island-strewn  surface 
of,  200,  266,  387-389,  447-448, 
460 ;  late  historical  importance 
of,  311;  migrations  in,  107,  299- 
300,  460;  mountain-bound  coasts 
of,  256-257,  280,  614;  nautical 
efficiency  in,  298-300;  size  of, 
313,  340.  See  also  Bering  Sea 
and  Polynesia 

Paghman   Mts.,   538 

Pak,  305 

Palatinate,  237 

Palembang,   321 

Palermo,  428,  509 

Palestine,  5,  16,  111,  122,  124, 
151 ;  Jewish  conquest  of,  26,  47, 
266,  512;  nomad  invasion  of, 
489,  547.  See  Also  Judea 

Palk  Strait,  437 

Palmyra,  535 

Pamir,  dome  of,  110,  568,  589; 
passes  of,  529,  550 ;  pastures  of, 
113.  489,  541-542,  587 

Pamlico  Sound,  260 

Pampas  of  South  America,  483, 
485 

Pamplona,  545 

Panama,  Canal,  130,  188,  286,  313, 
356,  431:  Isthmus  of,  130,  426, 
546 

Pandateria  Island.  440 

Pannonia,  85,  86,  108 

Pantellaria  Island.  440,  451,  457 

Pantiloff  Canal,  246 


INDEX 


669 


Papago  Indians,  489 

Papuans,  65,  382;  area  of,  424, 
428.  See  also  Melanesia 

Paraguay,  106,  364;  River,  36, 
338 

Parana  Eiver,  100 

Paris,  338,  367;  Basin,  480 

Parisii,  361,  367-368 

Parkman,   Francis,   366 

Paros,  459 

Parret  River  marshes,  372 

Pass  of  Belfort,  539-540,  547-549 
Dariel,     523,     528,     539, 

546-547,  554 
Derbent,   546 
Giovi,  528 
Roncesvalles,    545 
Thermopylae,   546 

Passes,  great  importance  of,  283, 
474,  521,  528-529,  535-537,  544; 
geographic  factors  in  historical 
importance  of,  474,  538-541, 
546-548;  markets  and  cities  of, 
207-208,  551-552;  object  of  con- 
quest, 97,  162,  522-523,  552-554, 
589,  592 ;  of  intermarine  moun- 
tains, 547;  peoples  of,  97,  130, 
522-  523,  545,  552-554,  586,  590- 
591;  persistent  influence  of,  5, 
545-547;  routes  over,  536-541; 
valley  approaches  to,  537-539, 
547-549,  554;  valley  settlements 
below,  549-552 

Passierthal,  598 

Patagonia,  64,  65,  82,  178,  482 

Pathans,  402,  587 

Pauillac,  246 

Paumota  Islands,  389,  446,  449, 
455 

Paunch   Indians,  98 

Payaguas  Indians,  36 

Payne,  Edward  John,  396 

Pearl  River,  229 

Peartree  Pass,  553 

Pegae,  250 

Peking,  352,  357,  509,  578,  613 

Pelasgians,   274 

Pelew  Islands,  446,  448,  456 

Pellice  Valley,  222,  600 

Peloponnesian  War,  78,  429 

Peloponnesus,  3,  111,  287;  penin- 
sular isolation  of,  397-398,  400- 
402,  404 

Pelusium,   492 

Pemba  Island,  252,  265,  268,  275, 
431 

Penal  colonies,  see  Boundaries  and 
Islands 


Peninsular  War,  545,  547 

Peninsulas,  as  continental  articu- 
lations, 254,  396-397^  contrasted 
effect  of  large  and  small,  397- 
399;  contrasted  geographic  con- 
ditions in  mainland  and,  400- 
401;  continental  base  of,  179- 
180,  400-403;  importance  of  lo- 
cation of,  397,  400;  interconti- 
nental location  of,  405-406;  isola- 
tion of  extremities  of,  403-404; 
naturally  defined  location  and 
differentiation  in,  133,  138,  214, 
309,  400-401;  places  of  survival 
and  asylum,  74,  273-274,  403- 
404;  similarity  to  islands,  409- 
410;  unification  of  race  in,  404 

Pennine  Mts.,   527 

Pennsylvania,  89,  199,  232,  375 

Pensa,  493 

Perche,  480 

Pergamus,  250 

Pericles,  67 

Perim   Island,   154 

Periphery,  see  Location 

Pernambuco,  153 

Perry,  Oliver  H.,  69,  540 

Perseus,  327 

Persia,  and  Afghanistan  boundary, 
363;  arid  climate  of,  296,  483, 
503,  507-508;  highlands  of,  402, 
528,  595 ;  irrigation  and  civili- 
zation in,  329,  509;  location  of, 
136,  145;  nomad  incursion  into, 
104,  491-492;  Russian  influence 
in,  142-143,  356-357 

Persian  Gulf,  267,  310;  Bahrein 
Islands  in,  266,  431,  454;  route 
to  the  Orient,  132,  254,  269,  337, 
425 ;  Russian  expansion  towards, 
142-143,  151,  162,  285 

Persian  Empire,  231,  319,  383 

Peru,  climate  of,  329,  561,  619, 
635;  desert  coasts  of,  37,  267, 
561 ;  early  civilization  in  inter- 
montane  basins  of,  134,  182,  329, 
390,  392,  561,  635;  highland  lo- 
cation of,  476,  611;  highland 
pastures  of,  64,  575;  Inca  em- 
pire in,  80,  91,  123,  269 ;  plateau 
population  of,  106,  561;  Span- 
ish in,  84,  98,  176;  terrace  agri- 
culture in,  569,  571 

Peruvian  Current,  389,  613 

Peshawar,  528,  538 

Petchora  River,  348 

Peter  the  Great,  42 

Petra,  507 


670 


INDEX 


Petrie,  Flinders,  84 

Petropavlovsk,  305 

Petrovsk,    547 

Pharaohs,   132,  358 

Philadelphia,   5,   347 

Philippine  Islands,  agriculture  in, 
456,  570;  American  acquisition 
of,  107,  109,  198,  285;  Chinese 
in,  30,  104,  268,  307;  density  of 
population  in,  452;  distribution 
of  wild  and  civilized  tribes  in, 
145-146,  272,  281;  Moros  on  the 
coasts  of,  88,  279,  459;  moun- 
ta"*n  relief  of,  446;  Negritos  of, 
158,  272,  391,  442;  part  of  the 
Malay  Archipelago,  318,  382. 
See  also  Luzon,  Mindanao,  etc. 

Philistia,  266,  277,  512,,  514 

Phoenicia,  coast  colonies  of,  96, 
164,  187.  196,  250-252,  274,  281; 
fisheries  of,  3,  331 ;  isthmian  lo- 
cation of,  131-132;  maritime  lo- 
cation anfl  expansion  of,  15,  107, 
123,  132,  162,  191,  264,  295,  302, 
427;  maritime  trade  of,  268, 
297,  303;  previous  habitat  of 
people  of,  266;  small,  naturally 
defined  location  of,  12,  130,  197, 
257,  268-269,  283,  310 

Phoenician  Sea,  311 
"Picts,  436 

Pidgin  English,  276 

Piedmont,  Italy,  39,  222,  429,  581 

Piedmonts,  as  boundary  zones,  52, 
228,  525-526,  530,  596,  599; 
colonial  frontiers  in,  530-531 ; 
density  of  population  in,  526- 
527,  530,  560,  565;  industrial 
development  in,  70,  481,  527, 
530,  558,  579;  roads  and  rail- 
roads along,  5-6,  501,  527-528; 
towns  and  cities  of,  527-530, 
547,  558;  zones  of  vegetation 
and  settlement  in  arid  lands, 
497,  501-502,  529,  541,  558-559, 
575 

Ple-ho  River  canals,  352 

Pigmentation,   38-40,   620 

Pile  villages,  geographical  distri- 
bution of  ancient,  56,  318-319; 
of  modern,  266,  319-322,  366; 
protection  and  food  as  motives 
for,  94,  318-319,  321-322,  374; 
structure  of,  319-321 

Pilgrimages,  99-100,  185 

Pillars  of  Hercules,  249 

Pindus  Range,  535,  546 

Piraeus,  250,  283,  285,  304 


Piratical  descents,  78,  89,  187,  250- 
252,  298,  314 

Pisa,  283-284,  429 

Pithecanthropus,   635 

Pittsburg,  349,  528 

Pizarro,   187 

Place  names,  74-75,  164-165 

Plains,  476-483;  accessibility  of, 
74,  172,  259;  as  highways,  5, 
44;  conditions  for  expansion  in, 
29,  348;  historical  movement  in, 
133,  183;  ^x)litical  and  ethnic 
unity  of,  46,  140.  See  also  Low- 
lands an3  Steppes 

Plant  life,  63-64,  112,  131-132, 
178-179,  446,  609.  See  also  Bio- 
geography 

Plataea  Island,  454 

Plato,  195-196 

Platte  River,  155,  346,  530 

Pliny,   296,   361,   490 

Plymouth    (England)    149,   406 

Po  River,  326,  360,  362,  554 

Po  Valley,  base  of  Apennine  Pen- 
insula, 66,  180,  401-403,  542; 
ethnic  amalgamation  in,  19,  121, 
164,  222,  543;  mountain  routes 
to,  283,  522,  539,  542;  naturally 
defined  location  of,  397 ;  pop- 
ulation of,  477 ;  Swiss  expansion 
to,  543 

Pogon,  250 

Poland,  central  location  of,  135- 
136,  138-139,  143;  German  ex- 
pansion into,  192,  224,  230; 
Jews  in,  124 ;  level  plains  of,  4, 
234-235,  478;  Russian  expan- 
sion into,  119,  151,  155,  181,  189 

Political  geography,  51-52 

Political  policy,  geographic  ele- 
ment in,  51-52,  195-200,  339, 
544;  parties,  23,  52,  161 

Polyandry,  geographical  distribu- 
tion of,  38,  67,  462,  504,  583- 
585 

Polygamy,  504,  583-584 

Polynesia,  agriculture  in,  56,  417, 
569 ;  checks  to  population  in,  67, 
463,  584;  density  of  population 
in,  447-448;  effects  of  maritime 
environment,  40,  41,  299-300, 
390;  migrations  in,  77,  87-88, 
103,  107,  299,  460;  Malay  ele- 
ment in,  384,  459;  North  Amer- 
ica and,  389-390,  395-396;  pau- 
city of  animals  ic,  434,  445-446, 
465.  See  also  Oceanica  and 
Pacific  Ocean 


INDEX 


671 


Pomerania,  331 

Pomona  Island,  449 

Pomors,  332 

Pompey,  313,  546 

Pondicherry,  165 

Ponza  Isles,  440,  451,  457 

Popham  's  colony,  253 

Popocatepetl,  mines  of,  610 

Poretta  Pass,  527 

Portages,  354 

Port  Arthur,  129,  176,  195 

Port  de  Canfranc,  547,  550 

Port  Glasgow,  247 

Port  Moresby,  821 

Porto-Eico,  338,  429,  431,  438, 
452 

Port  Koyal    (N.  8.),  455 

Port  Said,  276 

Portugal,  74,  86,  580,  630;,  and 
North  Africa,  132,  153,  405; 
area  and  location  of,  28-29,  149, 
151,  231,  284,  476;  colonial  ex- 
pansion of,  51,  123,  140,  193; 
colony  in  Brazil,  107,  273,  277, 
406;  Indian  Empire  of,  6,  96, 
138,  431;  maritime  development 
and  expansion  of,  17,  97,  250, 
257,  271,  285,  300-301,  432;  re- 
lief of,  478 ;  trading  stations  in 
East  Africa,  196,  265,  269,  310 

Poti,  547 

Potomac    Eiver,   87 

Potosi  mines,  342 

Powell,  Major  J.  W.,  linguistic 
map  by,  54-55,  78,  394 

Prairies,  44,  482 

Pretoria,    199 

Pribiloff   Islands,   439 

Primitive  societies,  geographical 
basis  of,  53-65;  scattered  loca- 
tion of,  80,  154-155 

Procida  Island,  440,  453,  457 

Progress,  theory  of,  68-69;  geo- 
graphic checks  to,  47,  62-64, 
212,  609 

Promontories,  249,  250,  397 

Propontis,   459 

Protection,  see  Isolation 

Provence,  19,  619;   speech  of,  222 

Prussia,  eastern  border  of,  94,  223- 
224;  large  area  of,  179,  482; 
Vandal  home  in,  77,  86 

Pruth  Eiver,   224,  565 

Psammeticus,  281 

Pskof,   342,   348 

Pueblo  Indians,  94,  395,  572;  ir- 
rigation and  civilization  among, 
18,  329 


Puget  Sound,  154 

Punic  Wars,  96,  314 

Punjab,  359,  543,  585 ;  location  of, 
104,  633;  pass  routes  to,  528, 
538,  539,  551-552;  trade  of,  528, 
554 

Puritans,  in  America,  21,  111,  253 

Purus  Eiver,  38,  531 

Pygmy  tribes  of  Africa,  105,  117, 
158 

Pyrenees  Mts.,  19,  303,  582,  592; 
as  barrier  boundary,  97,  214, 
401,  404,  535,  537;  passes  of, 
523,  528,  545,  547,  550;  pied- 
mont towns  of,  527 

Quakers  in  America,  111 

Quebec,  city  of,  247,  337,  347,  349, 

364,    368;     as    fur    market,    47, 

619;   Province  of,  221 
Queen   Charlotte  Archipelago,  417, 

419 
Quichua  Indians,  34,  101 

Eace  factor  in  history,  2,  75,  306- 
308,  434,  437-438 

Eaces,  and  continents,  76,  131,  390- 
391;  distribution  of,  100-106, 
112,  171;  geographical  origin  of, 
121-125;  isolation  and  diver- 
gence of,  287,  385,  392-393; 
kinship  and  vicinal  location  of, 
304-305,  384-385,  392;  perma- 
ent  and  vanishing,  118-120,  170- 
172;  stratification  of,  74,  106, 
114,  160,  271-274;  unity  of  hu- 
man, 30,  33,  121,  171-172,  292, 
333 

Eadnor  County,  564 

Eafts,  295-296,  349,  362 

Eailroads,  and  mountain  passes, 
545,  547-549;  and  rivers,  354- 
356;  in  arid  regions,  356,  498; 
colonial  lands,  200-201 

Eainfall,  effect  of  mountains  upon, 
15,  160,  270,  501-502,  526-527, 
542-544,  558,  563,  609-610;  ef- 
fect of  winds  upon,  109,  270, 
613;  map  of,  484;  importance 
of,  614-615 ;  nomad  migration 
and,  489-490 

Eainy  Lake,  348 

Eajputana  Desert,  6,  104,  159,  208 

Eajputs,  79,  526,  543,  596 

Ealeigh,  Sir  Walter,  253,  406 

Ealick   Islands,   299 

Eangoon,   347 

Eatisbon,  544 


672 


INDEX 


Ratzel,  Friedrich,  87,  305 

Ravenna,  283,  286 

Rechabites,    514 

Reclamation  of  land,  in  river  flood- 
plains,  325-327;  on  low  coasts 
and  deltas,  107,  245,  323-325; 
social  gain  by,  327-328 

Red  River,  (La.),  155 

Red  River  Valley   (Da.),  615 

Red  Sea,  as  an  enclosed  sea,  270, 
280,  282,  305,  386;  desert  coasts 
of,  267,  310,  510;  trade  route  of, 
30,  132,  140,  267,  270 

Reform  Bill  in  England,  52 

Refuges,  74,  93-95,  113,  117-118, 
158,  160,  178,  273-274,  280-281, 
403-404,  409-410,  438-439,  595 

Reindeer,  305,  625;  moss,  63,  609, 
624;  tribes,  41,  63,  152,  207, 
330,  485-486,  624-625 

Relativity  of  geographic  advan- 
tages, 12-14,  433-434,  436,  444, 
561-562 

Relief,  continental,  474;  contrast- 
ed and  complementary,  112-113, 
160,  475-477,  479,  557;  distribu- 
tion of,  475,  477;  graded  forms 
of,  523-524 ;  politico-economic 
value  of  varied,  112-113,  140, 
477-479,  557-558,  619;  sub- 
marine, 473;  zones  of,  see  Zones 
of  altitude 

Religions,  and  geographic  condi- 
tions, 41,  436,  526,  581-584, 
586,  588,  601;  area  and  differ- 
entiation of,  122,  175,  228,  230, 
414,  418,  419;  geographic  stamp 
of,  27,  185,  514,  599;  of  deserts 
and  steppes,  1-2,  27,  47,  498, 
506,  511-514,  599-600.  See  also 
Historical  Movement,  Mission- 
aries, and  Mohammedanism 

Remoteness,  298,  307,  380,  564; 
and  divergence,  173,  384-385;  of 
boundary  regions  from  center, 
228-234 

Reunion,  451,  453,  627 

Reuss  Valley,  358,  373,  534,  537 

Revel,  272 

Revolution,  the  American,  130, 
209,  237,  331,  540,  554;  Fren«h, 
209,  404 

Rewa  Island,  444 

Rhaetia,  91-92,  222,  522 

Rhine  River,  as  boundary,  230, 
357,  362;  cities,  124,  342;  Ger- 
man expansion  to,  110,  116,  155- 
156.  357;  highway,  130,  351- 


352;    Hinter.   549;    Hither,  534, 

549,  597-598;  mouth  of,  108,  117, 
340,    353;    valley    of,    111,    542, 
566;   valley  of  upper,  359,  373, 
535,  537,  543 

Rhine-Rhone  highway,  342,  539- 
540,  549 

Rhodes,  417,  427,  453 

Rhone  River,  44,  338;  density  of 
population  in  valley  of,  65,  564; 
valley  route  of,  27,  124,  532, 
540;  valley  and  trans-Alpine 
routes,  523 ;  valley  of  upper,  359, 
360,  373,  524,  534,  536,  537,  549- 

550.  See  also  Valais 
Richelieu  River,  366 
Riesen  Mts.,  360 
Riga,   339,   479 

Rio  Cauco,  259 

de  Janeiro,  454,  617 
Grande,  as  Mexico-U.S.  bound- 
ary, 220-221,  363;  valley  of, 
154,  329 
Negro,   482 

Ripley,  William  Z.,  94 

Ritter,  Carl,  36,  197,  255-256,  475 

Rivers,  and  railroads,  341,  354- 
356 ;  as  boundaries,  5,  58,  66, 
360-363;  as  coast  articulations, 
245-247,  260,  262,  281,  340-342; 
canal  extensions  of,  246-247, 
352-354 ;  dense  populations  in 
lowlands  of,  20,  322-323,  325- 
327,  401-403;  downstream  traf- 
fic and  expansion  on,  336,  339, 
348-350;  fluvial  settlements  and 
peoples,  81,  108,  157,  210,  322- 
323,  358,  359,  363,  366-367; 
head  of  navigation  on,  245-247, 
337-338,  341  ;  highways  of  ex- 
pansion, 44,  82,  98,  100-101, 
162,  210,  212,  338,  339,  342- 
346,  348-350,  597;  highways  of 
trade,  47,  339-345,  349-352,  367, 
375 ;  hydrographic  centers  of, 
348-349,'  353-354 ;  importance  in 
big  countries,  342-343 ;  impor- 
tance of  mouths,  246-247,  323, 
340,  342,  347-352,  369370;  in- 
fluence upon  historical  impor- 
tance of  oceans  and  seas,  338- 
340;  intermediaries  between  land 
and  sea,  245-247,  259-260,  265. 
336-338,  341-342;  international 
highways,  130,  350-352;  oases  in 
arid  lands,  43,  345-346,  356-357. 
500-502 ;  peninsulas  and  islands 
of,  368-370;  riparian  villages 


INDEX 


673 


on,  56,  364-366;  routes  in  arid 
lands,  345-347,  374;  tidal,  259, 
337,  347;  unity  of  valley  and 
system  of,  356-360,  593.  See 
also  Reclamation  of  land 

Riviera,  566 

Roads,  and  rivers,  354;  in  moun- 
tain conquest,  523,  525,  531,  532, 
539,  589-590 

Roanoke  Island,  253 

Rocky  Mts.,  barrier  boundary,  4, 
66,  190,  340,  544 ;  deserts  of,  35, 
77;  piedmont  of,  344,  346,  530; 
vacant  districts  in,  522 

Romance  languages,  74,  92,  122, 
420 

Romansch  dialects,  222,  598 

Rome,  city,  area  and  location  of, 
13,  26,  185,  357;  goal  of  pil- 
grimages, 99,  111,  185 

Rome,  Republic  and  Empire,  area 
of,  74,  191 ;  conquest  of  Alpine 
routes,  522-523,  525,  539,  553; 
decline  of,  17,  76,  230;  expan- 
sion of,  45,  52,  66,  74,  81,  82, 
86,  91-92,  96,  97,  132,  190-192, 
194,  200,  545-546;  Germanic  in- 
vasions of,  85,  86,  89,  111,  540; 
Mediterranean  location  of,  30, 
136,  138,  148-149,  515.  See  also 
Italy 

Romney  Marsh,  370 

Rostock,  284 

Rotterdam,   149,   246,  347,  351 

Rouen,  246 

Roumania,  language  of,  74,  92; 
location  at  Danube  mouth,  130, 
351-352;  vicinal  location  to  Rus- 
sia, 94,  124,  224 

Roumanians,  45,  136,  361;  moun- 
tain area  of,  526,  533 

Rovereto,  542 

Rovuma  River,  253 

Rubruquis,  William  de,  409,  509 

Rufigi   River,   260 

Ruhr  River,  351 

Ruins,  in  arid  lands,  502-503 

Russian  Empire,  area  of,  12,  119, 
129,  134,  175,  189,  194-195,  342: 
Asiatic  frontier  of,  76-77,  110, 
129,  138,  144,  148,  226,  348,  383; 
central  location  of,  138,  140, 
141,  143,  144,  151,  185;  climatic 
effects  in,  14,  344,  484,  619,  621, 
624,  630-632;  conquest  of  the 
Caucasus  by,  523,  525.  539,  597; 
designs  upon  the  Mediterranean 
and  Balkan  Peninsula,  180,  402; 


designs  upon  the  Persian  Gulf 
and  Indian  Ocean,  142-143,  188, 
542,  544,  547;  ethnic  borders  of, 
224-226 ;  ethnic  elements  in,  121, 
124,  159,  179,  272,  304;  expan- 
sion of,  28-29,  114,  119,  135,  140, 
158,  186,  209;  expansion  into 
Asia,  66,  79,  97,  106,  110,  142- 
143,  148,  151,  154,  157,  162,  163, 
189,  192-194,  198,  211,  229,  231, 
235,  271,  305,  312,  370,  428,  482, 
498 ;  interplay  of  geographic 
factors  in,  14,  129;  limited 
coasts  of,  14,  70-71,  141,  259, 
340;  maritime  expansion  in  Ber 
ing  Sea,  29,  305;  monotonous 
relief  of,  14,  70,  112,  117,  393, 
478-480,  482;  Norwegian  bound- 
ary of,  215;  Persian  boundary 
of,  357 ;  river  lines  of  expansion 
in,  44,  344-345,  348;  rivers  and 
canals  of,  339,  342,  353-354; 
steppe  nomads  of,  234-235,  491- 
493,  500,  505-506,  509;  steppe 
frontier  police,  133,  234,  488, 
492-493.  See  also  Kirghis,  Kal- 
mucks, Tartars,  and  Siberia 

Saar  River,  351 

Sabaeans,  270,  567 

Sabine  River,  229 

Sacramento   Valley,   545 

Sacred  Promontory,  249,  303 

Sahara  Desert,  115,  345,  483,  497, 
501-503,  514;  barrier  between 
Negro  and  Hamitic  Africa,  392; 
caravan  routes  across,  97,  152, 
346,  491-492,  506,  511;  French 
expansion  into,  157,  163,  212, 
498-499;  nomads  of,  113,  362, 
489,  491,  504,  558-559,  615-616; 
nomadie  incursions  from,  7,  89, 
104,  118,  491-492,  495 

St.  Ambrose  Island,  389 

St.  Bernard  Pass,  Great,  524,  528, 
536,  546,  550,  553 

St.  Bernard  Pass,  Little,  536,  550, 
553 

St.  Croix  River,  454 

St.   Etienne,  545 

St.  Gall,  Canton  of,  527,  594 

St.  Gotthard  Pass,  162,  528,  537, 
546,  548-550 

St.  Helena  Island,  179,  381,  432, 
440-441,  446 

St.  Joseph  Island,  368 

St.  Lawrence  Island,  382,  424 

St.  Lawrence  River,  155,  354,  368; 


674 


INDEX 


highway  of,  44,   134,   187,   212, 

338,  343,  618;   riparian  villages 

of,  264-266;  tidal  course  of  246, 

337-338;   valley,   360 
St.  Louis  (Senegal),  370 
St.  Moritz,  550 
St.  Nazaire,  246 
St.   Petersberg,  42,  175,  224,  246, 

254,  479,  614 

St.  Petersberg  Government,  632 
St.  Pierre  Island,  430,  450 
St.  Thomas  Island,  426,  453 
Sais,  372 

Sakalavas,    105,    423 
Sakhalin,  Island  of,  110,  134,  174, 

305,  381,  388,  410,  418,  428,  441- 

442,  450 
Saladin,   512 
Salassi  tribe,  356,  553 
Saldanha  Bay,  267 
Salem,  Mass.,  253 
Salina  Island,  451 
Salmon  Biver,  54 
Salt,  in  Saharan  trade,  152,  505 
Salt  River  Valley,  329 
Salwin  Eiver,   259,   320 
Salyes  tribe,  523 
Salzach  Eiver,  358,  361 
Salzburg,  358,  565,  573 
Samal  Laut  Malays,  459 
Samara  Province,  235 
Samaria,  91,  346,  545 
Samarkand,  491,  507,  529 
Sambos,   106 

Samnite  Confederacy,  588,  595 
Samoan    Islands,    382,    448,    455, 

460,  463 

Samos  Island,  123,  417,  429,  459; 
dense  population    of,    124,   453 
Samothrace  Island,  454 
Samoyedes,  Arctic  environment  of, 

35-36,  41,  172,  207,  486,  624 
Sanaa,  567 

San  Bernadino  Pass,  537,  549 
San  Diego  Bay,  263 
San  Domingo,  178 
San  Fernando,  337 
San  Francisco,  548;  Bay,  263,  545 
San  Francisco  River,  38 
San  Joaquin  Valley,  499 
San  Sebastian,  547 
Sanskrit,  268,  371 
Santa  Catharina,  state  of,  628 
Santa  Lucia  Bay,  140 
Santals,  159,  596 
San   Thome,   153 
Santos,  617 
Sa6ne  River,  353,  373,  549,  562 


Sapporo,  272 

Saracens,  civilization  of,  110,  496, 
508,  567;  in  Spain,  28,  46,  110, 

132,  231,  303,  405,  496,  547; 
maritime  expansion  of,  285,  303, 
429,  508 ;  nomadic  conquests  of, 

7,    79,    84,    104,    198,    305,   496, 
546.     See  also  Arabs  and  Moors 
Saragossa,  547 
Sardinia,   35,    145,   404,   409,   420, 

422,  429,  440,  442-443,  446,  447 
Sargon,  91 
Sark  River,  236 
Saronic  Gulf,  250,  425 
Sasar,  552 
Saskatchewan    River,    98,    154-155, 

344 

Satpura  Range,  538,  587 
Save  River,  85,  553 
Savoy,    mountain    environment    in, 

19,   130,   220-222,   523,   554,  581 
Saxons,   early   maritime  expansion 

of,   17,  46,  48,  85,  176,  214-215, 

273,  279 

Saxony,  65,  478,  527 
Scandinavian     Peninsula,     climate 

of,  144,  554,  612,  630;   location 

of,  122,  133,  399-401 ;  mountains 

of,   70,  215,  257,  522,  537,  544, 

549.       See     also     Norway     and 

Sweden 

Schako  Pass,  552 
Scheldt  River,  286,  324,  338,  340, 

342,  352,  353 
Schleswig-Holstein,   229,   260,  351, 

420 

Schlusselberg  prison,  441 
Schmaedel,  von,  39 
Schuylkill  River,  370 
Schweinfurth,  G.,  158,  296 
Schwyz,  Canton  of,  374,  527 
Scilly  Islands,  443,  450 
Scioto  River,  357;   valley  of,  89 
Scotland,  border  wars  of,  233,  236, 

435;    coasts    of,    184,    262,   342; 

dismembered   relief   and    history 

of,  475;   Highlands  of,  184,  421, 

475,  563-564,  581-582,  587,  592; 

Irish  in,  74,  298,  436;  Teutonic 

elements  in  lowlands  and  coasts 

of,  184,  304,  479,  547.     See  also 

Britain 
Scythian  nomads,  7,  142,  402,  488, 

493,   536 
Sea,    as   barrier,    43-44,    242,    244, 

298;   as  boundary,  139-141,  214- 

215,  257,  275,  418,  421,  430,  434; 

expansion  from  interior  toward, 


INDEX 


675 


110,  111,  123,  132,  140-143,  162, 
193,  263,  271 

Seas,  enclosed,  early  historical  im- 
portance of,  13-14,  150,  256,  282- 
283,  285,  311-312;  early  naviga- 
tion in,  300-302,  305,  307,  389; 
ethnic  and  cultural  assimilation 
in,  136-137,  303-308;  Indian 
Ocean  as,  308-310;  limitation  of 
small  area  of,  310-312,  339; 
small  area  and  neutrality  of, 
314;  zonal  and  continental  loca- 
tion of,  304,  308,  339,  340 

Seasons,  and  migration,  206-207, 
486,  489-490,  552,  574-575;  ef- 
fect of  contrasted,  629;  effect  of 
long  winters,  626,  629-633; 
length  of,  629-631,  633;  wet  and 
dry,  615 

Seduni  tribe,  553 

Segre  River  Valley,  547 

Seine  Eiver,  338,  353-354,  361,  367; 
islands  of,  368;  lowlands  of, 
482,  542 

Sella,  163 

Seininole  Indians,  93,  371-372 

Semipalatinsk  Province,  489 

Semites,  map,  105;  expansion  into 
Africa,  104-105,  117,  155,  305; 
nomads  of  deserts  and  steppes, 
7,  402,  511 

Seneca  Indians,  89 

Senegal  Eiver,  157,  193,  267,  278, 
280,  370,  386 

Senegambia,  512 

Sennacherib,  5 

Sennar,  65,  358 

Sennenwirthschaft,  574-575 

Septimer  Pass,  537 

Sequani  tribe,  369,  562 

Serbo-Croatians,  361 

Seriphos  Island,  440 

Servia,  central  location,  143 

Sesia  River,  548 

Sesostris,  492 

Sette  Communi,  222 

Severn   River,   369 

Seville,  246 

Seychelles  Islands,  451 

Shahidula,  208,  550 

Shajok  River,  295 

Shamyl,  590 

Shanghai,  341,  347 

Shangtung  Peninsula,  322,  399, 
410,  581 

Shannon  River,  361 

Shansi  Province,  410 

Shanty-boat  people,  323 


Shari  River,  481 

Shawnee  Indians,  65,  81,  89,  93, 
357,  562 

Shelter  Island,  443 

Shenandoah   Valley,  534 

Shensi  Province,  235,  530-531,  569, 
572-573 

Shetland  Islands,  35,  137,  264,  420, 
432,  449-450 

Shigatze,  531 

Shimonoseki  treaty,  176 

Shintoism,    414 

Ships,  size  of,  245-246 

Shiraz,  507 

Shire  River,  pile  villages,  320 

Shoshone  Indians,  77,  296,  382; 
linguistic  stock  of,  102,  329 

Shrewsbury,  369 

Shur,  Desert  of,  507 

Siam,  30,  308 

Siberia,  Arctic,  63,  65,  172,  249, 
624-625,  634;  colonial  frontier 
of,  79,  194,  211,  213,  232,  235; 
fur  trade  in,  10,  97,  619,  625; 
native  stock  of,  388-389,  418; 
reindeer  tribes  of,  305,  486; 
rivers  of,  44,  162,  344-345,  350; 
Russian  expansion  in,  29,  106, 
151,  192-193,  229;  Russian 
settlements  in,  154,  157 

Sicily,  161,  346,  401,  429,  442-443 ; 
climate,  453,  621-622;  Greek 
colonies  in,  265,  459;  Phoenician 
colonies  in,  187,  250;  thalasaic 
location,  382,  409,  427-428 

Sidon,   250 

Siebenbiirgen  piedmont,   526 

Sierra  Leone,  276,  280 

Sierra  Madre,  Luzon,  274 

Sierra  Nevada,   95,   474,  544,  545 

Sierre,  360,   366 

Si  Fan  tribes,  227,  587-588 

Si-kiang,   322,   366 

Sikkim,  523,  531-532,  551,  584 

Silesia,  224,  527 

Simbirsk,  493 

Simla,   568 

Simplon  Pass,  524,  528,  537,  546, 
548-549 

Sinai  Peninsula,  255;  mines  of, 
477 

Sind,  538,  587;  piedmont  bound- 
ary of,  359-360,  525 

Singan,  530-531 

Singapore,  104,  269,  308,  425-426, 
453 

Singhalese,  104,  425,  437 

Sinope,  252 


676 


INDEX 


Sioux,  82,  237;  migrations  of,  102, 
116;  scattered  tribes  of,  93, 
155 

Sir-Daria,  346,  529,  550 

Sirmur,  584 

Sistan  Lake,  295,  363;  basin  of, 
503 

Sitka,  613 

Siwa  oasis,  163 

Skiathos,  461 

Skopelos,  461 

Slavery,  area  and  climate  as  fac- 
tors in  American,  619-622 ;  eth- 
nic intermingling  through,  90-91 ; 
negro  in  America,  11,  80,  90-91, 
120,  161,  179,  201,  286 

Slavonic   dialects   in   Alps,  598 

Slavs,  area  of,  179,  180,  189;  ex- 
pansion in  Russia  of,  348;  ex- 
pansion into  the  Balkan  Penin- 
sula, 180,  273,  402,  404;  expan- 
sion across  the  Baltic  plain,  4, 
46,  106,  371,  479,  532;  expan- 
sion up  the  Danube  Valley,  4, 
45,  85,  146,  186,  532;  German- 
Slav  boundary,  136,  155,  222- 
224,  237,  479,  579;  withdrawal 
of  northern,  92,  176 

Slovaks,  136 

Smith's  Sound,  624 

Smolensk,   339,  348 

Smyrna,  276 

Snake  Indians  35,  54,  296 

Society,  and  agriculture,  61-63 ; 
land  basis  of,  53-60,  64-66,  215- 
219;  scattered  location  of  primi- 
tive, 80,  154-155;  small  area  of 
primitive,  181-183,  185-186,  195, 
197.  See  also  Area  and  State 
.  Society  Islands,  444,  455 

Sociology,  and  geography,  51-52, 
54,  511 

Sofala,  157,  275,  310 

Sogne  Fiord,  340,  549 

Soils,  agriculture  and,  63,  212,  261- 
262;  differentiation  of  popula- 
tion due  to,  112,  480-481,  525; 
effects  of  barren,  35,  47,  54,  63, 
609;  effects  of  fertile,  44,  58, 
152 

Sokna,  152,  163 

Sokoto,  140,  492 

Sokotra,  154,  425 

Solomon  Islands,  444.  448,  456, 
463 

Solon,    161 

Somali  Coast,  269 

Somme  River,  478 


Somnos  tribe,  367 

Songhoi  villages,  326 

Soult,  Marshall,  547 

South  Africa,  as  colonial  territory, 
20-22,  199-200,  355;  climate  of, 
106,  297-298,  483,  616,  622-623; 
native  tribes  of,  55,  93,  106,  116, 
119,  137,  158,  160,  176,  584, 
623;  pastoral  Boers  of,  135,  211, 
232,  488,  490,  497,  510;  peri- 
pheral location  of,  17-18,  48, 
173,  298,  385,  392,  623;  relief 
of,  524;  west  coast  of,  263,  267, 
346 

South  America,  64,  219-220,  342, 
485;  distribution  of  immigra- 
tion in,  106,  619;  native  race  of, 
37,  100-101,  178,  272;  penin- 
sula extremity  of,  73,  298,  385, 
392;  relief  of,  37,  394,  396,  475, 
558;  rivers  of,  337,  341,  355; 
river  tribes  of,  56,  108,  320; 
temperate  belt  of,  106,  179,  616, 
623 ;  vicinal  location  to  North 
America,  392.  See  also  Amer- 
icas 

Southampton,  264;  Water,  273 

South  Atlantic  States,  480-481, 
619 

South  Carolina,  47,  92,  93 ;  Indians 
of,  93,  102,  562 

Southern  States,  foreign  elements 
in  coast  belt  of,  275-276;  negro 
labor  in,  114,  619-620;  planta- 
tion system  in,  616,  622;  slavery 
in,  11,  80,  179,  286;  Southern- 
ers, 619,  622 

South  Seas,  world  highway  of, 
311-312 

Spain,  American  Empire  of,  52, 
84,  96,  107,  111,  114,  119,  176, 
342,  349-350,  430,  431;  arid 
climate  of,  627,  630;  coasts  of, 
28,  258,  261;  density  of  popula- 
tion in,  447-448 ;  ethnic  stocks 
in,  86,  92;  intercontinental  loca- 
tion 01,  28-29,  110,  132,  151, 
405,  537 ;  naturally  defined  loca- 
tion of,  133,  213 ;  maritime  de- 
velopment of,  28-29,  300-301; 
peripheral  location  of,  49,  131, 
141;  Phoenicians  in,  187,  250, 
303 ;  Pyrenean  boundary  of,  97, 
401,  404,  535;  Saracens  in,  28, 
46,  79,  84,  104,  496;  terrace 
agriculture  in,  26,  567.  See  also 
Iberian  Peninsula 

Spanish  Trail,  346 


INDEX 


677 


Sparta,  22,  430 

Speke,  J.  H.,  216 

Spencer,  Herbert,  34,  59,  60,  584 

Sphere  of  influence,  78,  142 

bpina,  283 

Spiti,  584 

Spitzbergen,  611 

bpliigen   Pass,   537,   550 

Sporades  Islands,  461 

Spree  Kiver,  370,  371;  forest,  482 

Srinagar,  551 

Stadtland  Cape,  314 

Stagirus,  459 

Stamford,  England,   245 

Stanley,  Henry  M.,  56,  297,  368, 
375 

Stanzerthal,    598 

State,  land  basis  of  the,  51-52,  54, 
59-60,  65-66,  68,  82-83,  184,  218- 
219.  See  also  Area  and  Bound- 
aries 

Steiermark,    191 

Steppes,  geographical  distribution 
of,  25,  64,  483-486,  511-512; 
migrations  in,  82,  133,  483, 
486,  495,  512.  See  also  Nomads 

Stettin,  246,  284 

Stevenson,  Eobert  Louis,  448,  462, 
464,  465 

Stone  Age,  121,  387,  390,  411,  522 

Stour  inlet,  £45 

Strabo,  77,  117,  283,  286,  326,  327, 
347,  363,  394,  410,  457,  509,  583, 
589 

Strait  of  Dover,  304 

Magellan,   356 
Malacca,  425,  459 
Messina,  401 
Oman,   337 
Tartary,   410 

Stralsund,  284,  304 

Stretensk,   350 

Suakin,  305 

Subanon  tribe,  39,  272 

Sudan,  caravan  highway  through, 
99,  118,  492;  Egyptian,  140, 
492,  498;  ethnic  mixture  in,  115, 
120,  135,  391,  511;  French,  140, 
157,  352,  373,  498;  nomadic 
raids  and  conquests  in,  65,  89, 
118,  368,  492,  495,  504,  511; 
Semitic  civilization  in,  112,  280, 
510,  514;  steppes  of,  7,  104,  373, 
483 ;  waste  boundaries  in,  216. 
See  also  maps,  105,  487,  513 

Sudetes  Mts.,  164,  224 

Snevi,  86,  216 

Suen,  Canal,  17,  154,  188,  285,  310, 


313,  431;  Desert  of,  58;  Isth- 
mus, 17-18,  386,  393 

Suffolk,  370 

Suleiman  Mts.,  marauding  tribes 
of,  525,  587,  595;  passes  of, 
536,  553-554 

Sully,  353-354 

Sulu   Archipelago,    318,   320,    382 

Sumatra,  Arabs  on  coasts  of,  193, 
269;  area  of,  433,  452;  Dutch 
in,  107-108,  581;  Malay  expan- 
sion from,  273,  459;  terrace 
agriculture  in,  569 

Sumbawa,  456 

Sunda  Islands,  Arabs  in,  164,  269; 
Chinese  in,  104,  267-268,  307; 
Dutch  and  Portuguese  in,  107- 
198,  265,  433;  Indian  civiliza- 
tion in,  268,  309;  link  between 
Asia  and  Australia,  144,  384, 
386,  392,  399;  pile  villages  of, 
320.  See  also  Malay  Archipel- 
ago 

Sunday    Eiver,    368 

Sungaria,    231 

Sungari  River,  195 

Sura  Eiver,  493 

Surat,   6 

Survivals,  158-160,  164-165.  See 
also  Islands,  Mountains,  Refuges, 
Swamps 

Sussex,   74 

Sutherlandshire,  450,  564 

Sutlej  River,  295;  upper  valley  of, 
552,  568 

Suvaroff,  544 

Swabia,  85,  479,  621;  mountains 
of,  19-20,  566 

Swahili,  people,  275,  559;  speech, 
276 

Swakop  Wadi,  346 

Swamps,  as  barriers,  18,  43-44,  297, 
361,  370,  400,  406,  420;  places 
of  refuge,  94,  371-372;  places  of 
survival,  117,  124-125,  370-371, 
420-421,  481-482;  spirit  of  the 
marshes,  372 

Swaziland,    140 

Sweden,  Baltic  location  of,  271- 
272,  311-314;  climate  of,  630- 
631;  colonies  in  America,  157, 
253,  300-301,  369;  Finns  in, 
119;  fisheries  of,  331,  631;  rela- 
tion to  Norway,  257 

Swinemiinde,    246 

Switzerland,  agriculture  in,  564, 
566,  571,  576;  area  of,  177,  183, 
564;  central  location  of,  138, 


678 


INDEX 


141,  143 ;  density  of  population 
in,  80,  522,  564;  differentiation 
and  isolation  in,  113,  598,  600; 
emigration  from,  580-582; 
Huguenots  in,  93,  237;  inter- 
play of  geographic  factors  in, 
16-17,  523,  554;  lakes  of,  549; 
lake  villages  of,  318-319,  321; 
mountain  state,  130,  133,  523, 
554;  political  constitution  of, 
17,  374,  527,  590,  592-595 ;  polit- 
ical expansion  of,  162,  543,  549; 
relief  of,  358-359,  558,  564,  619; 
stock-raising  and  pastures  of, 
573-577;  winter  industries  in, 
579 

Sylt,  Island  of,  420,  461 

Syracuse,  Sicily,  252,  454 

Syria,  99,  266,  268,  303,  400,  512; 
highlands  of,  489,  534;  isthmian 
location  of,  3,  13,  151,  283; 
Saracens  in,  84,  104 

Syrian  Desert,  58,  503,  507,  510, 
511;  markets  of,  505-506 

Syros  Island,  450,  453 

Sze-Chuan  Province,  mountain  bor- 
der of,  227,  234,  530-531,  573, 
575-576;  terrace  agriculture  in, 
568-569 

Tabatinga,  341 

Tabriz,  528 

Tacitus,  62,  281 

Tafilet  oasis,  506 

Tagliamento  Valley,  548 

Tagus  River,  432 

Tahiti,  29,  455,   462-464 

Taj   Mahal,   508 

Takla  Makan  Desert,  501,  503 

Tamerlane,    495 

Tamil  race,  104,  425,  437 

Tanger  Valley,  594 

Tangiers,  132*,  405 

Tanka  people,  366  367 

Taormina,   443 

Tapajos  River,  338 

Tapujos   Indians,  see  Ges. 

Tarentum,  454 

Tarim  River,  57,  512;  basin  of, 
62,  359,  502 

Tartars,  conquest  of  China,  306, 
495-496;  conquest  of  Russia,  62, 
91,  109.  129,  148,  226,  368,  410, 
479,  490,  493,  496,  497,  533, 
632;  in  the  Crimea,  234.  237; 
nomads,  4,  7,  198,  485,  503,  508, 
510;  organization  of,  58,  494; 


withdrawal  from  Russia,  77, 
110,  163,  348 

Tashkent,  507 

Tasmania,  385,  398,  418,  438,  441; 
native  stock  of,  170,  172,  177 

Taudeni,  152,  505 

Tedjend   River,   163 

Teheran,  528 

Tehuantepec,  Isthmus  of.  157, 
546 

Tekke  nomads,  491 

Telegraph  Plateau,  473 

Temperament,  and  climate,  40, 
620-621 

Temperate  Zone,  613-614,  616,  620, 
623,  629,  634-635;  historical  belt 
in  the  North,  150,  611,  634-635; 
large  area  of  North,  179,  392; 
movements  of  Europeans  in  the, 
104,  106 

Temperature,  and  zonal  location, 
615-616;  extremes  of,  611;  modi- 
fied by  oceans  and  winds,  613- 
614 

Tendouf,  506 

Tenedos  Island,  454 

Teneriffe  Island,  177,  441;  terrace 
agriculture  in,  569 

Tennessee,  116,  535;  mountains  of, 
45 

Tennessee  River,  162,  344;  valley 
of,  92,  481 

Tensas  Indians,  218 

Tents,  of  nomads,  485,  488 

Terai,  of  India,  588,  596 

Terek  Pass,  529 

Terek  River,  235,  538-539 

Ternate  Island,  444 

Terrace  agriculture,  geographical 
distribution  of,  26,  456-458.  563, 
566-571;  methods  of  fertilizing 
in,  565-568,  571;  system  of  til- 
lage. 565-570 

Tershelling  Island,  420 

Tertiary  Period.  40P;  Atlantic 
land  bridge  of,  387 

Tet  River  Valley,  547 

Teutonic   Orders,   429 

Teutonic  race,  area  of,  112.  116- 
117, 174;  in  Baltic  and  North  Sen 
basins,  274,  304;  in  the  low- 
lands and  valleys  of  Europe,  19, 
160,  170,  360;"  origin  of,  121, 
620;  tropical  acclimatization  of, 
62<3 

Teutons,  invasion  of,  4,  85,  540 

Texas,  65,  220-221;   American  ex- 


INDEX 


679 


pansion  into  Mexican,  229,  256; 
Indians  of,  55,  102,  155;  Rio 
Grande  boundary  of,  363;  Ran- 
gers of,  237 

Texel  Island,  417 

Thames  River,  340,  362;  estuary 
of,  245 

Thapsacus,  337 

Thasos   Island,   429,   454,   459 

Thebans,  22 

Theiss  River,  526,  565;  valley  of, 
41,  85,  533 

Thessaly,  92,  110,  402,  535;  coast 
of,  249 

Thirteen  Colonies,  climates  in,  618 ; 
expansion  of,  66,  142,  190,  197; 
naturally  defined  location  of,  3, 
134,  138,  142,  190 

Thomas,  Cyrus,  396 

Thomez  Indians,  218 

Thrace,  252,  259,  281,  319,  402, 
459 

Thucydides,  77,  78,  111,  429,  459, 
493 

Thuringian  Forest  Mts.,  19-20, 
116,  579 

Thursday  Isle,  425 

Tian  Shan  Mts.,  passes  of,  41,  529, 
550 ;  pastures  of,  541 ;  piedmont 
of,  43,  163,  501 

Tibbu  nomads,  362,  491-492,  497, 
501,  503-504 

Tiber  River,  82,  357,  360;  valley 
of,  476 

Tibesti  highlands,  501 

Tibet,  boats  in,  295,  297;  British 
influence  in,  100,  523;  Buddhism 
in,  27,  112,  175,  582-585; 
Chinese  influence  in,  112,  543, 
578 ;  ethnic  border  zone  of,  226- 
228,  402,  530,  543;  mountain 
industries  of,  578-579;  nomads 
of,  483,  503,  504,  548,  587;  pass 
routes  to,  551-553;  pass 
markets  and  trade  of,  100,  551- 
552;  polyandry  in,  583-585;  ter- 
race agriculture  in,  568.  See  al- 
so Central  Asia  and  Lhassa 

Tibeto-Burman  stock,  102,  526, 
594 

Ticino  Canton,  162,  543,  549,  565, 
593 

Ticino  River,  548;  valley  of,  537 

Tidekelt,    163 

Tidore  Island,  444 

Tientsin,   352 

Tierra  del  Fuego,  area  and  decline 
of  natives,  178;  coast  tribes  of, 


15,  36,  248,  266;  scant  food  sup- 
ply of,  182,  465 

Tifli's,  528,  539,  546-547 

Tigris  River,  345,  349;  valley  of, 
7,  91,  403,  476.  See  also  Meso- 
potamia 

Tilbury,    246 

Timbuctoo,  location  on  the  Niger 
River,  325,  345,  367,  491,  492; 
terminus  of  caravan  trade,  153, 
212,  506 

Time  element  in  geographic  prob- 
blems,  24-26,  28-29,  123,  266, 
412 

Timok  River,  363 

Timor,  165,  208,  431,  456 

Tinicum  Island,  369 

Tinneh  Indians,  137 

Titus,  90,  546 

Tlingit  Indians,  civilization  of, 
395;  fiord  coasts  and  sea-faring 
development  of,  36,  57,  137,  163, 
248,  262,  417,  419 

Todas,  polyandry  among,  583-585 

Todcaster,  245 

Toltecs,  374 

Tombigby  River,  217,  218 

Tomos  tribe,  552 

Tomsk,   634 

Tonga  Islands,  56,  382,  446,  464, 
465 ;  agriculture  in,  455-456 ; 
density  of  population  in,  448-449 

Tongatabu  Island,  381,  449,  456, 
460 

Tongking,  145,  165,  308 

Torres  Strait,  425 

Tosa  River,  548 

Toulouse,    338,    528 

Tracht,  600 

Trade- winds,  160,  389,  561;  arid 
belt  of,  104,  346,  448,  451,  483, 
615;  in  early  navigation,  30, 
129 

Trafalgar,  537 

Trajan,  92,  230 

Trans-Allegheny  settlements,  48, 
211;  and  the  Mississippi  River, 
111,  198,  238,  249-250;  back- 
woods communities,  135-136;  de- 
fection of,  3.  231-232 

Trans-Caspia,  74,  142,  355-357, 
497,  499 

Trans-Caucasus,  74,  162 

Transit  lands,  121-122 

Transkei,  74 

Transvaal,  British  influence  in, 
184,  187;  climate  of,  623;  cen- 


680 


INDEX 


tral  location  of,  140,  141,  263. 
See  also  Boers 

Transylvania,  526,  533,  565 

Trave  River,  252 

Travemiinde,   252 

Treaty  of  Paris,  351 

Trebizond,    547 

Tredici,  222 

Treitschke,  Heinrich  von,  19-20, 
351,  629 

Trek,  the  Great,  48,  488 

Trent  River,  44 

Trieste,  14,  258,  283,  286 

Trinidad  Island,  626 

Triopium,  252 

Tripoli,  140,  152,  506 

Tristan  da  Cunha,  172,  387 

Troad,  454 

Troezene,  250 

Tromso  Province,  330 

Trondhjem,  257,  613 

Tropic,  of  Cancer,  103,  272,  385; 
of  Capricorn,  100,  385,  622 

Tropics,  acclimatization  of  whites 
in,  37,  46,  617,  626-628;  agricul- 
ture in,  615,  628 ;  civilizations 
in,  150,  635;  climatic  effects  in, 
10,  46,  626-628;  colonization  in, 
37,  107,  114,  119,  120,  433; 
density  of  population  in,  560- 
561,  611,  626;  emigration  from, 
625-626;  hybridization  of  races 
in,  10,  104,  107,  118,  120,  135, 
628;  negroid  races  in,  100,  103; 
nigrescence  in,  38-40,  608;  re- 
tarded devlopment  in,  611,  628, 
635;  trade  of  temperate  lands 
with,  107,  123,  284,  611,  616- 
618.  See  also  Zones  of  alti- 
tude 

Truckee  Pass,  474,  545 

Tsaritzin,  493 

Tsimshean  Indians,  fiord  coasts 
and  maritime  development,  36, 
57,  163,  262,  417 

Tsushima  Island,  428 

Tuaregs,  desert  nomads,  7,  135, 
212,  491-492,  558-559 

Tun,   507 

Tundra,  486,  624-625 

Tunguse  tribes,  78,  418,  488,  611, 
624 

Tunguska  River,  344 

Tunis,  167,  502 

Tunisian  Peninsula,  397,  409,  498 

Tupi  Indians,  distribution  of,  100- 
101,  154,  272;  language  of,  277; 
riverine  and  coast  people,  108, 


272,  338,  364 

Turanians,  402.  See  also  Mongol- 
ian race 

Turfan,  503 

Turin,  528,  600 

Turkestan,  Chinese,  43,  193,  231, 
345,  359,  499,  550-552.  See  also 
Tarim  River  basin 

Turkestan,  Russian,  163,  345-346, 
483,  489,  498,  507,  508,  538,  548, 
550,  553,  615-616 

Turkish  Empire,  74;  and  the  Bos- 
porus, 129,  130,  180;  domain  in 
Arabia,  431,  498-499;  intercon- 
tinental location  of,  132,  180; 
Russian  designs  upon,  94,  547 

Turkoman  tribes,  conquests  of, 
496,  508;  nomads,  36,  491,  497, 
499,  502-504,  508,  615-616 

Turks,  conquest  of  Constantinople 
by,  17,  111;  in  Asia  Minor,  83, 
92,  146,  180,  273,  402;  in  Dan- 
ube Valley,  5,  30,  45,  186;  in 
Europe,  3-4,  76,  135,  140,  146, 
402,  430;  nomads,  7,  26,  495-496 

Turuchansk,  344 

Tuscany,  20 

Tuscarora  Indians,  93,  154 

Tver,  348 

Twat  oasis,  113,  152,  491,  506 

Tyre,  island  location  of,  250,  277; 
trade  of,  252,  277,  331,  427,  505, 
535;  thalassic  location,  13 

Tyrol,  Alpine  location  of,  130, 
373,  522,  534,  565;  agriculture 
and  pastures  in,  571,  574;  Ger- 
man element  in,  191,  543;  lan- 
guages and  dialects  in,  222, 
598;  political  organization  of, 
592 

Ubangui  River,  481 

Ugalentz  Indians,  137,  278 

Uganda,  374,  375,  495 

Ukraine,  14,  85,  97,  137,  480,  621 

Uleaborg,  272 

Ulm,  535 

Ulster  County,  Ireland,  435 

Unai  Pass,  538 

Unalaska  Peninsula,  388 

United  States,  area  of,  60,  66,  130, 
178,  194,  199;  area  and  coast- 
line, 256;  area  and  rivers,  342, 
arid  West  of,  355-356,  499;  At- 
lantic location  of,  30,  151 ;  cen- 
tral and  interoceanic  location, 
130,  141  142;  climate,  618; 
coasts,  142,  256,  264;  distribu- 


INDEX 


681 


tion  of  immigration  in,  30,  95, 
275-276,  460,  619-620;  ethnic 
boundary  zones  of,  221-222;  ex- 
pansion of  territory  of,  66,  69, 
142,  162,  188,  190,  193,  197-201, 
209-212,  214,  218,  219,  229,  231, 
256,  343-345,  349,  482,  530;  re- 
lief of,  475,  522;  rivers  of,  342- 
343,  345,  350,  352,  354;  South- 
erners and  Northerners  in,  619, 
622;  western  frontier  of,  148, 
151,  199,  210-212,  232 

Unt«rwalden,  Canton  of,  374,  527, 
593 

Upernivik,  249 

Ural-Altaic  languages,  388 

Ural  Mts.,  157,  344,  541 

Ural  Eiver,  58,  234,  490;  Cossacks 
of,  236 

Uri,  Canton  of,  358,  374,  527,  564, 
565,  593 

Uruguay,  87,  106,  351 

Uspallata  Pass,  546 

Ustica  Island,  440 

Utah  basin,  54 

Ute  Indians,  329 

Utica  (North  Africa)  250 

Utrecht,  345 

Uzinza,  495 

Vaal  River,   106 

Vailupu  Island,  463 

Valais,  Canton  of,  358-359,  360, 
564-566,  593 

Valdai  Hills,  348,  353 

Valders,  549 

Val  d'llez,  578 

Valence,  338 

Val  Leventina,  162 

Valleys,  importance  in  mountains, 
533-534,  565;  longitidunal  for 
highways  and  settlement,  258- 
259,  394,  533-535,  537,  572,  594; 
transverse,  529,  533-534,  537- 
539,  547-549,  550,  571-572,  593 

Valparaiso,  Chile,  546 

Valtellina,   359 

Vancouver,   381,  446 

Vatdals,  in  Africa,  83,  405,  627; 
migrations  of,  77,  86-87 

Van  Rensselaer  Island,  369 

Vanua  Levu,  463 

Varao  Island,  449 

Variation,  and  area,  169,  173;  and 
natural  conditions,  33-34 

Vasco  da  Gama,  270 

Vasiliki,  416 

Vate  Island,  464 


Vaygats  Island,  207,  486 

Velikaya  River,  348 

Veneti  tribe,  249 

Venetia,  dikes  of,  326 

Venezuela,  area  and  rivers  of,  342; 
coast  islands  of,  265;  pile  vil- 
lages in,  320;  race  elements  in, 
91,  106;  railroads  of,  355 

Venice,  and  the  Brenner  Pass 
route,  258,  283,  539,  544,  548; 
art  and  culture  of,  99,  508-509; 
commerce  of,  258,  508 ;  insular 
base  of,  123,  257;  origin  of,  94, 
439 ;  political  holdings  of,  3, 
271,  427,  445;  thalassic  location 
of,  13,  14,  149,  283-284,  286, 
301,  314 

Vercingetorix,  533 

Verkhoyansk,  611,  624 

Verona,  326,  369,  528 

Vesontio,    369 

Vespasian,  546 

Vespucius,  Americus,  301,  320,  406 

Via  Aemilia,  527 

Via  Aurelia,  536 

Vicenza,  222 

Victoria,  Australia,   355 

Victoria  Nyanza  Lake,  297,  374, 
375,  386 

Vienna,  30 

Vindhyan  Range,  as  barrier,  159, 
538;  primitive  tribes  in,  587, 
596 

Virchow,  34 

Virgin  Passage,  426 

Virginia,  first  settlement  of,  197, 
312,  369;  frontier  of,  199,  236; 
Indians  of,  155;  interplay  of 
geographic  factors  in,  16,  261; 
plantation  system  in  tidewater, 
11,  23,  161,  246,  261,  557;  to- 
bacco trade  of,  47,  284 

Visayan  Islands,   145-146,  419-420 

Visigoths,  86,  339,  488 

Vistula  River,  110,  353,  371;  diked 
delta  of,  108 ;  German  expansion 
east  of,  190,  209,  223;  Slavs 
west  of,  46,  106,  224 

Vitebsk,  348 

Viti  Leva,  444 

Vitimsk,   634 

Vladicaucus,    539,    546-547 

Vladimir  Government,  632 

Volchov  River,  342,  348 

Volga  River,  and  the  Caspian,  338- 
339,  348,  374;  Russian  expan- 
sion down,  140,  162;  Russian 
frontier  on,  77,  226,  234,  236, 


682 


INDEX 


348 ;  Tartars  on,  7,  58,  163,  490, 

493;  tideless  mouth,  259,  347 
Volkerwanderung,   17,   74,   76,  84, 

86,  109,  111 
Volney,  58 
Vologda,  340 
Volturno   River,  369 
Vosges    Mts.,    39,    527,    536,    539, 

566;   as  natural  boundary,  214, 

542 
Voyageurs,  47,  135,  190,  354,  364 

Waal  River,  352;  swamps  of,  117 

Wabash  River,  364 

Wadai,  99,  140,  218,  526 

Wadis,  as  desert  routes,  346 

Wagner,  Moritz,   115,   169 

Wahabi  Bedouins,  512 

Waldenses,  161,  222,  600 

Wales,  319,  369;  area  of,  398; 
boats  of  296-297 ;  Celtic  survival 
in,  403,  421;  highlands  of,  535, 
564;  piedmont  towns  of,  527 

Walfish  Bay,  263,  316 

Wallace,  D.  M.,  76 

Wallace's  Line,  208,  473 

Wallachians,    404 "~~" 

Wallis  Island,  448 

Walls,  as  defense  against  nomads, 
492-493 

Wangeroog  Island,  417 

Wappaus,  J.,  509 

War,  of  1812,  23,  540-541;  of  the 
Roses,  52 

Warraus,  Indians,  320 

Wash,  245,  286,  324,  370 

Washington,  George,  199 

Washita  River,  155 

Water,  advantages  of  boundary  on, 
318-319;  economy. of,  330-331; 
man 's  relation  to,  318-333 ;  pro- 
portion of  land  to,  293,  333,  380; 
unity  of  earth's,  292,  337,  376. 
See  also  Fisheries,  Navigation, 
Irrigation  and  Reclamation 

Waterpower  in  mountains,  70,  527, 
579 

Watersheds,  expansion  over  low, 
44,  338,  343-345,  348-349;  river 
canals  over,  353-354 

Waziri  Afghans,  553 

Wealden  Forest,  370 

Wei  River  valley,  185 

Welland  Canal,  247 

Welle  River,  155,  364 

Wends,  371 

Weser  River,  106,  164,  246,  340, 
478-479 


Wessex,  372 

West  Africa,  coast  of,  280;  coast 
middlemen  of,  278,  321;  Euro- 
pean colonies  in,  153,  157-158, 
267,  370;  inland  origin  of  coast 
tribes  of,  266-267,  271 

Westerly  winds,  30,  388,  613-614 

Westermarck,    585 

Western  Ghats,  584,  610 

West  Friesland,  420 

West  Indies,  see  Antilles 

Westman  Isles,  43,  449 

Westmoreland,    564 

Westward  movement,  109,  343-344, 
533 

West  Virginia,  in  the  Civil  War, 
23,  161,  557 

Whiskey  Rebellion,  232 

White  Horse  Pass,  531 

White  Nile,  41,  155,  325 

White  Race,  area  and  distribu- 
tion of,  174,  391 

White  Russia,   224,   371 

White  Sea,  210,  255;  fisheries  of, 
207,  332;  rivers  of,  340,  353 

Wilderness  Road,   199 

Willamette   River,    98 

William   the   Conqueror,   372 

Winds,  see  Monsoons,  Trade-winds 
and  Westerlies 

Windward    Isles,   265,  453 

Winsor,  Justin,  388 

Wisby,  304 

Wisconsin,   633 

Wisconsin  River,   349,   364 

Wismar,   284 

Withdrawal  of  peoples,  80-81,  92- 
94,  163,  176-178,  272-273,  526 

Witwatersrand,  mines  of,  187,  580, 
623 

World  Ocean,  311,  340 

World  relations,  evolution  of,  13, 
67-69,  76,  78,  149 

Wiirtemberg,  373,  577 

Wyandot  Indians,  89 

Xenophon,  216 
Xerxes,  546 
Xingu   River,    338 

Yaks,  227,  551 

Yakuts,  418,  624 

Yakutsk,   344,   486 

Yalmal  Peninsula,  486 

Yamese   Indians,   93 

Yanaon,   165 

Yangtze  Kiang,  110,  326,  329,  352, 


INDEX 


683 


367,  568-569,  573;  trade  of,  341- 
343 

Yarkand,  359,  501,  550,  552,  587 

Yaroslaf   Government,  631 

Yazoo  River,   Indians  of,   326 

Yellow  Sea,  308,  336,  341,  399, 
410;  as  enclosed  sea  basin,  137, 
306-307,  312 

Yellowstone  Valley,  98 

Yemen,  early  civilization  and 
naturally  defined  location  of, 
123,  197,  635;  highlands  of,  489, 
595,  583;  maritime  colonies  of, 
96,  123,  164;  maritime  trade  of, 
193,  268-270,  309;  terrace  agri- 
culture in,  26,  303,  567 

Yenisei  Eiver,  207,  344,  388 

Yermak,    conquest   of,   344 

Yezd,  143 

Yezo  Island,  143,  187,  272,  305, 
388,  442 

Yiddish,  124 

Yo  Eiver,  295,  362,  492 

Yomut   nomads,   491,   499 

York,   245 

York   Peninsula,   382 

Younghusband,  Sir  Francis,  43, 
531 

Yucatan,  395,  397 

Yukagirs,  388,  624 

Yukon  River,  highway,  340;  In- 
dians of,  116,  249;  mountain 
passes  to  gold  fields  of,  278,  544 


Tunnan  Province,  227 

Zambesi  River,  36,  306,  355,  362, 
368;  mound  villages  of,  325 

Zamboanga  Peninsula,  272 

Zandeh,  155,  216 

Zante  Island,  447 

Zanzibar  Island,  Arab  expansion 
to,  252-253,  265,  270,  276,  406, 
512;  density  of  population  in, 
451,  453 ;  East  Indian  immi- 
grants in,  268,  626;  Portuguese 
station  in,  157;  Sultan  of,  431; 
Swahili  people  of,  275 

Zealand,  Island  of,  location,  882, 
397,  445 

Zeila,   305 

Zionists,  111 

Zirian  nomads,  486 

Zogi  La  Pass,  575 

Zona  Libre,  220-221 

Zones,  see  Frigid,  Temperate  and 
Tropics 

Zones  of  altitude,  557-560,  567-568 ; 
density  of  population  in,  558- 
561,  564-565;  economic  and 
cultural  belts  of,  557-561,  573, 
575,  577-578;  in  the  Tropics, 
560-561,  567,  607,  616-617 

Zoological  realms,  208,  385,  473 

Zoroastrianism,    599 

Zug    Canton,   527 

Zurich,  528;  Canton,  527,  564 

Zuyder  See,  324,  371 


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